Forever Young
by Louise24601
Summary: Being a teenager is hard, especially when all you want is to go to med school and your friends think you're so weird for not being interested in boys. But everything changes when newcomer Michael Scofield becomes Sara's seat neighbor in history class. Who is he? Where did he come from? And why does Lincoln Burrows seem to hate him so much? Mi/Sa. AU High School.
1. Chapter 1

Sara had always been 'the smart girl' at school.

Her girlfriends treated her to that label with a dismissive tone, when they found the rules of teenage life did not apply to Sara – say, she didn't like shopping, or, more incredible, wasn't interested in boys – yeah, but you've got all these 'smart-girl' hobbies, Sara, you've got Mozart playlists on your iPhone, and you read Shakespeare for fun.

So what if she did?

Apparently, that was breaking away from the path of normal adolescents, and all deviations from it were generally blamed on 'what a smart girl' she was.

But even then, some transgressions were held to be more serious than others.

It was nearly the end of September when Sara did something that shocked her group of friends beyond the usual. By that time, summer was already a fast-fading sunset, the habits of high school life just around the corner. It's like riding a bicycle, some people say, you don't forget how (as she'd never actually been on a bike in her life, Sara would have to take their word for it). Getting up at six in the morning, having to choose between fast-forwarding through your morning shower and skipping breakfast, being so bored during class because the teacher's just rehashing a bland version of something he's already said, and, last but not least, that intimate circle of girlfriends that Sara somehow loved but didn't like, the girls that had been her truest friends since middle school.

Gretchen Morgan, Lisa Tabak and Nika Volek were the most prominent members, with Gretchen as their uncontested Queen Bee.

It was an unchallenged law of nature that, by the time the clocks struck twelve inside the vast private school rooms, Gretchen had already teased at least one of her close friends, without mentioning the other yet more criticism-prone students. Though no victim or masochist, Sara had accepted this and often greeted the slights with a remark provocative enough to further shock her friends. It was a way of making it so Gretchen became the butt of her own joke, and the only way for Sara to tolerate this cruel habit.

Too little too late for her to look for a clean break.

Sara had simply been friends with the girls long enough that, at this point, the bond would hold through thick and thin, and any attempt to sever it would only lead to avoidable suffering and – which was much worse to Sara – high school drama.

"I don't believe you, S."

Sara had been fishing through her drawer for her history notebook when she heard Gretchen's voice behind her.

Sure enough, the two other girls, Lisa and Nika, were standing on each flank, like two pretty armed weapons Gretchen was holding ready to aim and fire.

"I wish you'd humor me and start using my full name again," Sara said, unfazed. "_S_ is a little sophomore, don't you think?"

This was only part strategy to change subject. Sara really had been growing increasingly annoyed of that nickname.

"No need for secrets," Gretchen ignored the argument altogether. "I heard all about it from Nando. You know Linc tells him everything." She added as if, logically, that meant Sara should have assumed Gretchen would have been made aware of what had happened.

Not that much _had_ happened, by any reasonable standards.

Sara shrugged. "Well, I didn't really think being turned down was bragging material."

"Good, _thank you_ for putting it out there." Gretchen sighed. "I swear, I don't know why you're so intent on throwing away all the best opportunities that come at you."

"Again, it didn't strike me Lincoln Burrows was an opportunity. I must have missed the signpost."

"Yeah, and it was a big shiny red one, you know, the way signposts try to look when your life _depends_ on it."

That was pushing it too far for Sara to hold back a laugh. "I'm not interested in boys, Gretchen. As I remember, you've already settled that was weird a long time ago – can we move on now?"

"It was weird four years ago, S. Since you turned seventeen, though, it's just been getting a little more beyond words with every second."

Sara rolled her lips together, without managing to feel annoyed. Honestly, she just wanted for the four of them to get to class and start talking about something else.

"What'd you want me to say?"

"That you're interested in girls. Or older men. Anything other than getting into med school and your little social justice battles."

"It's for your own sake," Nika agreed. "You know high school's supposed to be a special time. We just – we don't want you to feel later like you've missed out on it."

"And yet," Sara exhaled, "all you're doing is giving me plenty of something I definitely _won't_ miss."

"Lincoln Burrows's a catch, Sara." Gretchen spoke her full name as she slipped into deeper seriousness. "Even you can't not see that."

"Why? Because he's handsome, because he plays in the basketball team?"

Sara did hope once out of high school, these things would not be markers of value to any sane mind in the vicinity.

Sara added with a let's-cut-the-bullshit look. "Or because _you_ want to date him?"

"Well," Gretchen admitted, without looking bruised in the slightest, "it would have been considerate of you to at least go on a couple of dates with him to fix something up. _Rapprochement_. Aren't you supposed to be diplomatic?"

Those words were thrown at her every once in a while, understood to be vague synonyms of 'smart'.

"Honestly, Sara." Gretchen sighed.

Sara felt relieved, because the bell had just rung, and Gretchen looked like she was just about done with the subject, at least for the next few hours – naturally, she would hear about it again at lunch.

"Sometimes, I think you're just trying not to do what's expected of you."

Sara shrugged her shoulders.

It was more strategic to allow Gretchen to have her way. Sara had learned long ago that fighting against labels only led to the label being shoved more forcefully down your throat.

To be fair, she _wasn't_ trying to do what was expected of her – which didn't mean she was deliberately aiming for the reverse.

Gretchen, naturally, would not understand this as she was the strictest follower of social etiquette, the performer _par excellence_, who acted her own character variably depending on the seasons – whatever the new black was, Gretchen was sure to be among the first to wear it – her one never-changing feature was her capacity to adapt to her environment so as to ensure her chances of survival.

"I don't understand you," Gretchen said again, after taking Sara by the arm as a sign of truce while they were walking to their classroom. "You can at least _see_ that he's handsome."

Now, her perception rather than judgment was under scrutiny.

And yes, Sara did have eyes enough to see Lincoln Burrows was as close as teenagers could get to the male definition of 'handsome' – that is to say, strongly-built, with fortunate green eyes and even a smile that looked authentic rather than an imitation of older men, actors, publicity models. That smile that's meant to hint at the unspoken treasures he'll pour on the lucky woman who catches his eye. Most of the teenagers who tried to smile like this achieved nothing but ridicule, but there was something about Lincoln Burrows's matter-of-fact behavior that hinted he was the kind to mean business. He, for all that may be said against him, was his own person, which was a compliment Sara also liked to treat to herself.

Indeed, Sara even liked Lincoln, though they had few occasions to really talk to each other. Their relationship as friends had only taken off last summer, when Lincoln's grades had gotten deplorable enough that his parents left him no choice but to at least appear to take his graduation seriously. That he would ask for her help hadn't struck Sara as all that shocking – she was, after all, reputed to be the smartest girl in school – or, mind you, as any attempt from Lincoln to make a move on her.

He had actually behaved admirably, on the evenings when they met up at the school library to study, showing himself to be enough of a quick-learner that Sara was at once settled on the fact that his alarming grades had been the result of neglect and disinterest rather than strict unintelligence. Really, Sara didn't doubt his motives had been as plain as he had put them to her when he first asked for her help.

And he had taken her refusal to go out with him pretty well, all in all.

Disappointed, and with enough confidence to own his disappointment rather than draw up his defenses and aggressively dismiss her.

"Wow," he'd said, as if this hadn't happened to him a lot, at least since he'd grown taller and bulkier than most of the adult men Sara knew. Then he'd started laughing to himself softly, rubbing the stubble on his chin with his thumb. "That's too bad. I mean, I really like you. I could have sworn you liked me back."

"I do," she said.

He had treated her answer like one of the equations they studied together, an intricate unfathomable piece of mystery he didn't know what to make of.

Her own fondness for him made itself undeniable and symptoms soon started to spring within her – pangs in the chest, a rush of heat in her cheeks. She was sorry to hurt him.

But Sara honestly had no remote interest in the oh-so-desired state of 'having a boyfriend', whose unquestioned popularity she actually wondered at.

Wasn't your natural state aloneness, weren't you born without a companion attached at the hip? Therefore, shouldn't it be your wish for a change in that state that would be considered strange rather than the reverse?

People interested Sara as a cluster of signs to be read like enigmas, pieces in her ever-widening study of social behavior and human nature.

So far, her interest in relationships had generally stopped there.

"Sara?" Gretchen nudged at her lack of response.

"Yes. Sorry." She shook her head. "It's not so bad. I mean, we're going to stay friends."

Sara hoped this would actually be true. Though Lincoln's pride hadn't been wounded enough that he'd refused to cancel their study-sessions right there and then, Sara did dread some new awkwardness between them that would just prove impossible to stifle.

The girls managed to sneak into the history classroom tailing after the last wave of entering students, so that their teacher could pinch his lips at them but not outright accuse them of being late.

As usual, Sara sat at the front row, which was the more desolate, while her girlfriends took their habitual seats in the back.

Sara noticed Lincoln was already seated, and she cast a glance his way, almost expecting that his eyes would follow her as she made her way through the classroom, which no doubt would give Gretchen and the girls something to feed their gossipy talk and keep them going until the matter was further explored at lunch.

But Lincoln was not looking at her.

Indeed, he did not acknowledge her presence at all, not with that becoming smile he usually saved up for her when they saw each other in class.

There was an icy air of vexation on his face, which Sara first thought she was responsible for.

It was only when she reached the front row that she noticed where Lincoln _was_ looking, a green glare more outwardly displeased than she had ever seen on his face before.

On the seat next to Sara's, normally vacant, there was a young boy she didn't remember ever seeing at school, tall – though you couldn't really tell how tall while he was sitting – and looking frail for his medium-sized clothes. Indeed, he was a peculiar sight, with a shock of dark brown hair like wool to the touch, and eyes unhinging blue.

"Miss Tancredi."

"Sorry."

Sara took her seat, annoyed at herself that she'd been arrested by the presence of intruder on the neighboring seat.

His sitting there, she assumed, was by all means accidental.

The front row _was_ the least crowded of all, probably he had only meant not to draw attention, if he had not been directed by the teacher himself, who was known to bemoan students' lack of bravery when it came to their enduring his presence directly, face to face, for the full class.

Still, surprise had piqued its way into Sara's chest, and she felt oddly more annoyed for it.

A newcomer, this late in the season? And no one at all had been talking about it?

Indeed, as Gretchen considered herself the center of any influx of gossip that was of the least importance, Sara felt she would have heard about this if anyone had been sharing the news.

They were talking _now_.

The whispers behind them was like the chirping of insects on a summer night, where the sheer absence of silence and brewing life about you keeps you from sleep.

Their questions penetrated Sara's brain despite her will – Who was the strange boy? Strangers are strange by definition, and boys, to girls' minds, especially. How could he have arrived here so silently, without perturbing the perennial flow of chattering talk in the school in the least?

And why was Lincoln Burrows staring daggers at him?

…

**End Notes: **This popped out one morning as I stood at my desk. I've never written an alternate-high-school story before, and yet I find myself full of ideas as to where this is going. I'd love to know yours, so do share your reactions in the comment section. See you soon!


	2. Chapter 2

Empathy had always been one of Sara's curses. Though herself capable of a steel confidence when she gave an oral presentation, the visible distress of her classmates, their reddening collars, sweaty hands on the chalk, and stammering series of 'hums' and 'ohs' as they struggled through their notes, could send Sara into a state of embarrassment at least equal to the one the poor students were themselves experiencing.

Therefore, as murmurs began breaking about the newcomer, Sara braced herself to share into the boy's turmoil, but when she stole a discreet glance toward him, she saw that his face was impregnable, visibly unmoved.

What a great deal of nonsense, she thought suddenly, all that agitation about a boy.

Granted, he did not look _common_. His eyes, for one, were a too direct shade, his hair looked an extraordinary texture, and there was something about the vastness of his forehead, the straight arrow-line of his nose, that made Sara think of the Greeks and their tragic heroes.

But there was nothing to account for the frenzy that took over the students for the full hour that history class lasted. No horn on the boy's forehead or hooves for feet, nothing spectacular. Though you could not call the boy ugly, he wasn't _handsome_, to borrow the word which Gretchen usually used to label the boys worth her interest. He did not look like a model straight out of a fashion magazine, the way unexpected newcomers often look in Hollywood movies. The girls would not be lining up for his phone number at the end of class or wage war on one another for his attention.

Yet he was not _plain_.

It was not that Sara meant to study him, only the teacher had started going on about the civil war and she'd already read half a dozen books on that topic last summer, when she got interested in it, as she sometimes got interested in random topics – Renaissance Europe or ancient Egypt or the medieval burning of witches.

Therefore, every word out of the teacher's mouth was about as appealing as pre-digested porridge, and aside from the times when he would ask the class a few questions, and she, out of a mix of intellectual honesty and pity, would propose an answer, there was nothing going on even remotely interesting to steer her attention away from the boy.

His handwriting was the prettiest she'd ever seen for a man. Generally, a careful attention to the curve of letters is considered a breach in virility, and boys from an early age get used to a nearly undecipherable hand, one of the first problems Sara had encountered when she'd taken Lincoln as her protégée student during the summer.

But Michael's letters were neat and the result of a careful carving. Not precious – nothing superfluous about them.

_It must all be in order_, _in control_.

Part of her felt it was wrong to do this – to read him.

But, to kill the tediousness of the hour, glances went both ways, and she could tell he was reading her also.

He, too, was bored with the class.

Though he didn't raise his hand once, he scribbled the answers on his notebook before anyone could volunteer to say them.

Really.

Sara felt, from instinct as well as from the deductions she could draw of her hour-long appraisal of him, that she and the boy must be alike at least in some respects.

Once or twice, after pretending to drop her pen or feigning the need to stretch, Sara turned back for a discreet glance toward Lincoln Burrows's table, only because it actually felt as if he was trying to pierce holes through their heads with the sheer force of his gaze.

He hadn't stopped staring since the class began.

At some point, the teacher asked him a question directly – sighing as he did when he got tired with teenagers' attitude, and he must have decided Lincoln's freezing anger was a case in point.

"Mr. Burrows, why don't you tell us what your thoughts are on the matter?"

"Don't have none to share."

The classroom buzzed with delight. Smoldering voices such as Lincoln's and delinquents in general, _bad boys_, were a la mode these days.

Sara herself felt a rush of heat fly to her face.

Though Lincoln had occasionally been known to fool around during class, it was nothing mean-spirited, and he would never say something outright defiant or disrespectful.

"What about President Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg? We've just played it. Nothing you'd like to say about it?"

"Nope."

"_Nothing_, really, that would at least make it look like you've been paying attention at all?"

A long, raw exhale sounded behind Sara's head.

She hadn't dared turn around to look at the exchange.

"Well, you know, now you mention it I think he wasn't such a neat character as you're painting him out to be."

"Oh no," Sara whispered inaudibly.

Naturally, the eyes of her seat neighbor, the peculiar new arrival, fixed on her with revived interest, but he seemed to be the only one to have noticed.

It was just that Sara had rambled on about the civil war to Lincoln, the way she rambled about things she'd just read, when he would take an interest in her latest reads – and he often did.

Now, she was starting to wish she'd kept her mouth shut.

Professor Pierce wasn't a bad teacher, but his view of history usually implied a thick layer of polish that glossed over the more embarrassing irregularities. Like a lot of historians, he believed in the national myth and American heroes, of which Abraham Lincoln was one, most certainly.

But it was too late to do anything to help it.

Soon, Lincoln started spitting back all of the inglorious things she'd told him about the famous president through the course of summer, things she hadn't expected he'd even remember.

"Freeing the slaves sounds right to me, but I wonder why you don't tell us what a nasty racist good old Abe was."

"I beg your –"

"It's in all the letters he wrote to his equally racist friends. That _naturally_ he believed in the superiority of the white race. _Naturally_, he wouldn't want a black man for a neighbor. That's without mentioning his tyrannical use of executive powers during his term, how he suspended the habeas corpus when it came to separatists, and how he used the emancipation of the slaves to justify the slaughter that his war was turning into. Honestly, Professor, I wish you had said some of those things. Maybe then some of us would be paying attention. Not me," he admitted. "Right now, I don't give a fuck about Abraham Lincoln. I wish we didn't have name in common is all."

Sara's eyes were squeezed shut by the time Lincoln finished.

There was a moment of silence – time for Professor Pierce to gather his authority and stammer the obvious word, "_Detention_!"

"Wait," Sara said. No matter if it made it look to the whole class, including her girlfriends, that she was taking Lincoln's side which _must mean_ she was secretly in love with him. "This is my fault, I've been reading Howard Zinn during the summer –"

"Thank you, Miss Tancredi, I don't think Mr. Burrows needs anyone's help to be impertinent. If you're so keen on sharing his fate, it'll be my pleasure to see you both in detention next Saturday."

Sara was too startled to protest.

She should have been expecting it. Professor Pierce had never liked her, despite her being one of the only students who so much as feigned an interest in his class. Probably, she eluded his definition of a proper teenager – immature and incapable of intelligent criticism.

The class started again without further ado, while Sara stretched her fingers over her forehead and sighed.

That was just what she needed, really – to be confined in a room with Lincoln Burrows just a few days after she'd turned him down.

With the corner of her eye, Sara caught her seat neighbor looking at her but he looked straight back at his textbook when she shot him a glance at him.

Surprisingly enough, she thought, he was smiling.

…

Lincoln was in a vile mood all day, and even playing ball with Fernando Sucre after class in the school gymnasium didn't manage to clear it away.

That was uncharacteristic. Linc usually had a way of taking things coolly, of letting the gross mass of high school drama sweep over his shoulders; but this was very different, of course.

"Jesus, Linc!"

Nando exclaimed when the ball whistled past his ear and bounced angrily against the wall.

"You're trying to kill me?"

"Sorry."

"Look, how about you be straight with me? Not like I don't know what this is about."

Lincoln shot him a look and couldn't control the vipers in them – he was such a useless shit when he was in one of these moods. Hated it, every second of it, how his vision seemed to blur around the edges, how his voice would spark up every time he spoke, like he was about to spit out gallons of fire.

It was one of the most embarrassing things in the world, he reckoned, to be unable to keep your own self in check.

What was more infuriating was how some people could just keep a lid on their emotions, however they raged and raged below the surface.

People like his brother.

Lincoln clenched his teeth and looked at the ground, going to fetch the ball rather than answering Nando's question.

"Come on," he said, but Lincoln could hear the tentativeness in his voice. This wasn't your regular annoying prick of a pal trying to squeeze the juice out of you. Nando wasn't a prick, to start, and he only meant to help. "Since that new guy sat in the class room you 'been looking at him like he had horns coming out of his forehead."

"Nothing to say about it."

"So, you don't know him?"

Lincoln sighed, his throat burning with the poison that wasn't coming out of it. It was only a matter of out before the truth was out in the open. "He's my brother," he said.

He started dribbling the ball against the ground not to look at the way his friend's jaw dropped open.

"Your brother?"

"It's no big deal, Nando. I mean, we don't get along. When our parents died we got split up and put into different foster families, and we hardly saw each other since."

"You have a _brother_?"

Lincoln grunted in annoyance. "_Yes_. Can we move on now?"

"Well, why didn't you ever –"

"Like I told you, we don't. get. along."

"But – why?"

"If I tell you, will you be off my ass?" Lincoln tossed the ball on the ground. "Not much to say, anyway. We're just two different materials, like oil and water. We don't mix at all."

"That's it?"

"Isn't it enough?"

Lincoln grabbed one of the towels from his backpack and wiped the sweat off his head with one quick move.

"Look, Michael's just the sort of kid you don't want to grow up alongside to when you don't have the tools to compete, you know. Before he was four, he could read the newspaper at the breakfast table next to my dad. Corrected mistakes in the math copybook in his first year in school."

Fernando shrugged his shoulders, like he was missing the point. "So, he made you look bad, is that it?"

Lincoln shook his head. "We're two different teams is all. Got nothing to do with each other. Anyway, I barely saw any of him back when we still lived in the same house – I had school going on, and he was always up in his room, anyway, always studying the stuff mom got for him 'cause he was gonna be a _genius_. He was nine when we were taken to foster care. We barely spoke to each other since. I don't know what I could say to him now, for the life of me. I don't wish him bad or anything, but he's a stranger. I'd hate to think he's expecting brig-brother love, that's all."

Their eyes crossed, and the flash of shock and disapproval Nando clearly couldn't shake off fueled the anger burning in the pit of Lincoln's stomach.

Right.

Because Michael was younger, because he'd landed in a few unlucky families, people somehow got it into their heads that he was Lincoln's responsibility – never mind that he himself had only been thirteen at the time.

It was all, _Poor child, being orphaned so young, and he's such a delicate boy_ – delicate, Michael sure was; Lincoln remembered thinking sometimes the boy just wasn't cut out for planet earth. How he'd crawl under the table sometimes with both hands cradling his head, only when there was a little too much noise in the room, like he just couldn't cope with everything that was happening at once.

And what was Lincoln supposed to do? Devote himself to the kid entirely, sweep him under his shoulder like a broken-winged bird? Play surrogate daddy, when he'd scarcely seen more of his own father than the back of his head? Make this strange child into his new sun, and orbit around him like his parents had, acting like his brain was the most precious thing on earth?

"I'm sick'a playing. I'm gonna head for the showers. Catch you later."

"Yeah," Nando said.

That same helpless blend of disbelief and horror in his voice.

Lincoln turned his heels without looking behind his shoulder.

_Go right ahead_, he thought. _Let 'em label me a cold son of a bitch if they like. See how I care if by the time high school's over, I'm not winning any brother-of-the-year awards_.

…

Michael as a rule spent a great deal of time observing people, so it wasn't any surprise that, following that first hour in history class, he would keep watching the girl that had been sitting next to him, and watching him back.

She didn't fit in the easy categories precut for people at school.

Pretty without putting effort in makeup or clothes, obviously popular though unashamed of raising her hand in class, ready with the answer, and she didn't seem like the kind of girl he thought would be interested in his brother.

Also, she had a flock of friends around her at lunch that didn't fit with her at all, somehow making all the irregularities about her stand out more starkly in contrast.

Her friends ate little, their lunch trays composed of the skinny-girl high school diet par excellence, steamed vegetables, one glass of milk, one apple.

The girl kept playing with the apple in her hand, deflecting from troubles of the day.

"He's still looking at you," Gretchen told Sara. "The new guy."

"So weird," Nika said.

"Maybe he'd stop looking if you girls weren't _staring_ at his table."

Sara beat the apple softly against the surface of her tray.

She didn't need this right now.

Being stuck in detention all Saturday, getting caught in the neatly enmeshed cobweb of teenage drama.

There was still so much learning to do before she could even consider getting accepted into med school. Recently, she'd been trying to memorize the names of all the bones in the human body, starting with the hand, out of whose twenty-seven bones she still struggled with two.

She couldn't believe she'd even spoken up for Lincoln, earlier in class.

Not because he didn't deserve it, or because she cared, really, that it was going to get the rest of the students shipping for them at least until the end of the year.

But because Sara had made it a personal rule to go through her years of high school without getting involved in such things.

Lincoln was a big boy. He could get himself in trouble all by himself if he wanted to, and he certainly didn't need her standing up for him. Ridiculous.

Now, her father would be furious and all the things she'd planned to have learned by the end of the weekend were jeopardized and –

And that new kid really was looking at her.

As Sara felt the heat in her face, glowing, and as she battled for outward casualness, alternatively hiding her face behind her hand as if to mask a yawn, or feigning extreme interest in her apple, she knew Gretchen Morgan wasn't the least fooled.

Nika and Lisa might be chattering on like it was their last day on earth, with the corner of her eye, Sara could see that Gretchen was staring and grinning redly at her.

"Oh, S," she sighed, mercifully allowing the girls to keep chirping – a good ruler knows she should be merciful, at least part of the time, and so Sara's increasing discomfort went on without being unmasked. "We're going to have such a fun senior year together. You know that?"

Sara pretended the air between them was clear, unclouded by the bittersweet vapors of high school politics and power.

"Well," she said. "You know how every year flies. I'm sure it's all going to be over before we've had time to do anything memorable."

"Want to bet on that?"

But Sara did not.

Really.

There was something about that year that just made her feel in her bones that it was going to be –

Different.

…

**End Notes**: I loved writing this chapter. Nothing better to do in a Coronavirus quarantine ;). Good luck to you all in this crisis and do lots of reading!


	3. Chapter 3

Sara flinched at the overly loud sound of Lincoln Burrows' cracking knuckles. They were each sitting in their respective seats, close enough that it was impossible for her not to see him in the corner of her eye, even when she was trying not to look. Professor Pierce had made them both sit on the front row, where he could see them – except he clearly didn't consider himself under any obligation to stand by the blackboard all day, watching over them during their detention.

The only thing he had said to them, after sweeping their unenthusiastic "Hello" with an irritated wave of the hand, was: "Eight pages on Abraham Lincoln's leadership. That's the only thing you need to be thinking about today. If it's not on my desk by five this afternoon, or if I don't agree with the quality of your essay, you'll be here again every Saturday of the term, until I'm satisfied that the message's sunk in. That understood?"

Sara muttered a miserable, "Yes."

Lincoln just stared straight at him. It was only his stone silence that made her answer sound submissive.

Pierce ignored Lincoln's defiance; maybe it was too early in the day for him to give up on the impossible task of taming this wild horse.

"Good. Now, as you're sitting there, I want to hear no talking. No whining. Just the sound of ink on paper and mental labor."

He smiled as if he had just given the description of a delicious meal.

"Starting now."

And Sara had started, nearly as soon as he'd finished – while he spoke, she had carefully gotten her pencil case out of her bag along with four sheets of lined paper.

For a while, the essay kept her busy, but she'd done over nine pages after only two hours and a half, and rereading herself became so tedious she couldn't get herself through it more than twice.

It was now a little before noon. The clock, hanging next to the blackboard, was silent – no ticking. Right now, Sara would have taken ticking, would have taken anything over the lack of words that made everything she or Lincoln did sound deafening-loud.

Her clearing her throat – did she usually do that so often?

His cracking his knuckles.

Pierce had gotten bored of watching them half an hour ago. He'd given them no word of warning before slipping out – just pointed his finger ominously at them.

"D'your dad give you a hard time over getting detention?"

Sara started at the sound of Lincoln's voice. She'd been so focused on the other sounds their bodies made by just shifting in their chairs, she'd forgotten they _could_ speak at all.

After all, Pierce hadn't left his ears inside the classroom.

And she was rather relieved he'd make an attempt to show he wasn't mad.

Things had been weird last week, after her turning him down and that scene in history class.

"Yeah."

"That's gotta be your first detention ever, right?"

She shrugged guiltily. It was nice to hear the way he talked to her hadn't changed. He still liked her. Still teased and invited her to tease back. Their old harmony restored.

She was glad.

"And your folks?"

"Ah, they're used to it with me. It's along the lines of, 'How could you get yourself in trouble, so early in the term?'"

She couldn't help laughing at his imitation of a shrill maudlin voice.

"Plus, I'm grounded."

"What does that amount to?"

Then, he laughed, and she realized how she'd given it away that being grounded was just as unfamiliar to her as detention.

"No going out after school with friends. And I have to do my homework. At first, they wanted to add, 'no practicing basketball in the yard', but they figured out all on their own that was like shooting themselves in the leg. If I have any shot at a scholarship this year, it's gonna be thanks to basketball. Even they ain't dumb enough to take that away."

Sara was silent.

It was no secret to anyone in school that Lincoln didn't really get along with his foster parents.

He sighed. "Well, I'm allowed to do boring stuff, like read. Bet you'd like it." He grinned. "Bet your usual life would feel like being grounded to me."

She threw an eraser at his head and he dodged it, easy.

It was nice to know they were at peace.

"Maybe we should do that," she said. "It being our senior year and all."

"What, more grounding?"

"Trying new things."

She drummed the cap of her pen against the table obliviously. She had been thinking of picking up some school activity, just so Gretchen would stop harassing her to try out for cheerleaders, and so she could get her head away from biology books at least a couple hours a week.

When she focused on Lincoln again, she realized how earnest he looked –

And how he might be tempted to interpret what she'd said.

A furious blush swamped to her cheeks, making her feel like she'd stepped into a sauna. "I mean – " She said the first thing that popped into her mind. "I was thinking I'd try out for the drama club."

"Huh. Would'a pictured you more as a mathletics girl. But if the whole point is getting out of your comfort zone," she stared intently at her pen as he spoke, certain she could not possibly get any redder, "you ought to try out for basketball. We'd love to have you."

"Right."

The very idea of herself holding a ball made her palms dewy.

They were silent again for a while. Sara grew horribly impatient; she hated having nothing to do worse than anything, and she felt stupid for not having brought BRS Gross Anatomy, but she'd expected Pierce would be a whole lot more serious about keeping an eye on them.

"So, what's your take on the new kid?"

Sara didn't know whether to be more embarrassed at Lincoln's question or relieved to have something else to think of than the infinity that filled up every second.

"The new kid?"

"Scofield."

Sara took a moment to think. These were mined grounds beneath her feet. It was obvious from their last history period that Lincoln had a problem with Michael – if it had been Gretchen, in her shoes, she would have woven a skillful answer so as to get as much of whatever juicy secret there was to discover beneath Lincoln's cool surface.

Yet again.

If Gretchen had been in her shoes right now, she'd probably think detention was the ideal time and place to try making out.

"I haven't really spoken to him."

"No opinion, then?"

"What," she laughed, "is he a controversial topic?"

Sara didn't _have an opinion_ about most of the students here. She didn't generally think her classmates were interesting enough as subjects to come up with one.

Then it was Lincoln who cleared his throat.

Suddenly, she didn't care what the secret was or that things had gotten a little awkward between them recently.

It was like last summer, on some nights when he opened up about something real about himself – even just a few words. He wasn't much of a talker.

She felt like his friend.

"What is it?" She said. "How do you know him?"

But what she'd really meant to ask was, _Why do you hate him?_

He released a sigh. Didn't stall for time.

"He's my brother."

Sara's jaw unscrewed.

Suddenly, Michael's face flashed into her head, all angles and lines, like the sketched design of a monument still growing into itself. Nothing superfluous like pimples or hairs. A somewhat striking face for a boy his age.

And how he'd looked at her when their tables weren't too far away from each other at lunch. _Stared_ at her, even, without seeming even to register his attitude as weird.

The thought that _that_ boy was Lincoln Burrows' brother made absolutely no sense.

"I thought I'd tell you," he explained, "so you don't hear it from someone else."

"Does everybody know?"

"No. I'm not in a hurry to publish the news," he said naturally, like that raised no further questions, "but I don't know about what he might say."

Sara thought about this.

Michael hadn't really struck her as the kind who would be saying much to anyone in the next few weeks.

Then, she thought maybe Lincoln had noticed his brother looking at her sometimes – not only at lunch, really, but in the halls, and sometimes even in class.

And maybe what he'd meant by her not hearing the news from someone else was that he didn't want her to hear it from _Michael_, somehow.

"Well –"

"Didn't I tell you both to be quiet?"

Sara jumped in her seat; she hadn't realized Professor Pierce had made his way back to the classroom. For the few hours that followed, he sat at his desk, reading Sara's essay, visibly annoyed that he couldn't find fault in it.

Throughout the rest of the day, Pierce scarcely gave them more time alone, so there was no chance for them to speak to each other, nothing for Sara to do but process the new information about Lincoln's relationship with 'the new kid', as everyone in school called him.

The bell rang, and they made their way out of the building, Sara walking toward the car that was waiting for her on the other side of the street, Lincoln visibly heading out on foot.

He gave her a smiling "See you later," and Sara felt the day could have gone worse – much worse.

She didn't think for a second that, next Monday, at school, as she'd walk by the half-empty list of drama club members in the hall, she'd put down her name, almost as a private joke; or that, after watching her from his locker, Lincoln would sneak toward the sheet of paper after she had gone and add his own name to the list.


	4. Chapter 4

**Warnings**: this chapter contains references to child abuse

…

"Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee –"

Lincoln paused in the middle of his line to look at the script.

"Come _on_, Burrows," their teacher whined. "We've been at it for an hour, and we haven't even finished the scene. Is it too much to ask you to learn your lines? And don't try and be clever, Miss Tancredi. If you think I don't see you mouthing them to him, you're fooling yourself. And just like I can see it, so will the audience when you're on stage."

Sara sighed in a mix of defeat and compassion, trying to avoid looking Lincoln directly in the eye.

To be fair, she couldn't imagine why Professor Reynolds had cast him as Hamlet when he couldn't seem to remember more than a couple of lines at a time. Maybe it was just that Lincoln, unlike a majority of the students, even among the seniors, had the distinct advantage of _looking_ the part. Sort of. At least, he could look serious, and deliver an honestly good performance so long as his eyes weren't glued to his script.

It had been a surprise that Reynolds should choose her for Ophelia's part, too – but a lesser one. Because, really, she couldn't even say why Lincoln had auditioned in the first place.

If not for the obvious reason of spending more time with her, which sent her stomach crawling with discomfort, and which she refused to acknowledge.

"Know what?" Reynolds sighed. "It's no good doing this if you don't know your lines. The performance is this Christmas, Burrows – at this pace, you won't know half the play by then. I want the two of you practicing together, _all the time_ if you have to, just as long as you get your act in order."

A vague, barely audible sneer sounded from behind them.

Sara turned around and saw Michael, dressed in the telltale janitor dark-blue uniform, dragging a mop and bucket of water behind him.

"Sorry." Somehow, he managed to sound completely at ease before a teacher and two of his classmates, when interrupting what was clearly a rehearsal. "I was told to clean the auditorium at six."

Professor Reynolds checked at the time on her cell phone and swore.

Sara's eyes drank in Lincoln's reaction despite herself – he was smoldering, eyes shooting thunder at his brother, the boy who, as the year was now half-way through October, could hardly still be called 'the new kid'.

Getting hired as part of the cleaning crew was the smartest thing he could have done, that is, if he had deliberately been trying to get the school to stop talking about him.

Indeed, Sara was in a good position to appraise the state of gossip at school, given Gretchen and the girls never failed to discuss the latest rumor in details at lunch time, and ever since Michael had gone from the 'weird kid who kept staring at her' to someone who cleaned the school grounds after class, and taken on the uniform of the cleaning crew, he had become utterly invisible to the eyes of most of the students.

Not hers.

Or, she could hardly fail to notice, Lincoln's.

"This is a private meeting," Lincoln hissed, and Sara flinched at the obvious hostility in his voice.

Though she had seen them in each other's presence before – they shared several classes beside history – the brothers usually adopted a quiet attitude of dismissal, reciprocally treating the other like he was invisible.

And though she could not forget that first hour of class when Lincoln had gotten himself into detention, or the steel harshness in his voice when he had told her who Michael was, it was the first time she ever saw either one of them say a word to the other.

"Really," Professor Reynolds cut in, "I dare say we're finished here. If you plan on doing more practice today, Mr. Burrows, I can only encourage you, but I think you'll be just as comfortable outside."

Sara stopped herself from looking at Lincoln, who she knew was blushing, and who would feel all the more embarrassed if she did look.

Somehow, her own gaze collided with Michael's as she was deflecting, and she was surprised to find him smiling and steady. He didn't flee her eyes, as most boys would have; at least, the ones who couldn't boast of the privilege of being considered 'popular' by their fellow students.

It was strange. Strange in ways she couldn't explain.

How that smile made her uncomfortable, sent a hot wave of needles prickling down her stomach.

And Sara could not deny that neither the blue janitor's uniform, nor the fact that Michael had lost the gleam of fresh gossip in the past weeks, had done anything to make him look invisible _to her_.

"Right," she said, blushing herself, now, though Lincoln was probably too busy glaring at his brother to notice. "Come on. We can keep practicing in the yard."

…

Michael never bothered himself with what the school said – or didn't say – about him. Things like that, superficial things, could find no room even in his adolescent mind. Adults seemed to find that very worrying, like he was displaying mutant abilities. _If you don't worry about what your peers think about you now, then when?_ As if the limbo of teenage life was a place in which all the passions that are expected to be evacuated from adulthood were given free reign, and it was weird, outright weird, that Michael should feel no need for them.

_You shouldn't be cutting yourself off from kids your age, Michael_. That had been the advice which the therapist had given him, during the several sessions before he accepted to put his stamp on Michael's request for emancipation papers. _You should be having fun_, _going out with people. Like normal kids, you know?_

Michael had nodded his head, feeling it was in order, so that he could be done with the process as soon as possible.

But the words didn't mean anything to him at all.

Normal was just one of the things that he'd given up.

Lincoln's attitude toward him, though more serious and more deep than mere locker-room chatter, wasn't something which Michael tormented himself over, either.

Painful, maybe. But Michael had learned to smile under pain's biting grip, so that his foster father had ultimately turned his back on the whole process of belt-unbuckling and severe whipping, because he was disgusted and a little scared of the wide, defiant grin with which Michael would take it.

Michael didn't think his brother's reaction incomprehensible, though, as Sara and Sucre had when Lincoln had told them. The young man had long accepted the world as a hostile place, and it made much sense that his brother should dismiss him as odd and undesirable company along with the immense majority of the people he knew.

By October, Michael was actually fairly satisfied with how things were going. He had found a job, and he had fortunately stopped being of any interest to most of his classmates, which enabled him to live alongside them quite invisible and unperturbed for the main part.

Now – probably not to draw further attention to their relationship, Michael guessed – Lincoln had stopped casting hateful looks his way, at least when people were around, and settled on ignoring him instead.

Michael was aware of, but indifferent to the change. It did give him plenty opportunities to watch his brother, while the latter pretended not to pay attention to him. Lincoln had changed little since the two brothers still lived under the same roof. For as long as Michael could remember, Lincoln had been that taller impulsive boy, and even before he rejected him outright, he had always greeted his presence with a kind of superior disgust, like Michael was an odd species of spider, and the fact of his being in the same room as him made it impossible for Lincoln to be comfortable.

And also, Michael noticed, he kept trying to hang around that redhead from history class.

Sara.

Her Ophelia act was nice, very nice, from what he'd heard of the rehearsals, casually sweeping the corridor that led to the auditorium, although she rushed it, sometimes, struggled to find balance between the emotions the text created and the smooth delivery of her lines.

And Lincoln –

Michael couldn't stop himself from laughing when he thought about it.

Lincoln was about as believable as Hamlet as a bear gifted with human speech. He couldn't think of one reason why his brother would have even tried to get the role if not to see more of the girl, Sara.

Michael himself saw plenty of her – it only took being unashamed of looking – although he had never even spoken to her.

Until that day, in Phys. Ed.

They'd just gotten out of the pool, limbs glistening wet, smelling of chlorine. Michael noticed them, not just because his eye had taken to spotting Sara in a crowd, but because her group was always the loudest. The black-haired girl Gretchen was laughing in her rich, deep voice, which sounded more womanly and mature than she looked at the height of her seventeen years.

"Now, Sara, you can fool yourself and some of the ninnies at school, but don't think you're fooling _me_."

Sara sighed.

Michael was interested in her cool demeanor, in why she tolerated those girls, with whom she seemed to have nothing in common, when she could so clearly benefit from the extra time. Once or twice, he'd seen her sitting cross-legged in the hall, immersed into some huge med school works whose sheer weight would discourage many.

Of course, friendship in high school was always a matter of compromise; you endured the pestering jabs because having no people was viewed as singularly suspect – and it always made you invisible, in the end, even when it started by making you the strange creature in the box who all could gleefully harass in democratic enjoyment.

But Sara wasn't afraid, and didn't even look really interested in what the other students said about her.

They hustled past him without a glance, but Gretchen talked loudly enough that he could still hear them.

"That you stand up for him in class, get your angel Mary-Sue ass into detention all for his sake. That you join the drama club just when he signs up –"

"You know," Sara's voice was cool, "just because you repeat something enough times isn't going to make it any more likely to happen."

"Completely untrue," Gretchen said. "I'm sure that's how wars happen. I'm sure every time we say things are bound to get murky between this or that country, that it ultimately makes it so inevitable to everyone concerned that it's _bound_ to happen."

Sara thought she'd enjoy Gretchen's theory more if they were talking about geopolitics rather than her love life.

"What sort of a Hamlet is he, anyway?"

Sara sighed, not so much out of annoyance than to stall – it felt disloyal to give a whole and truthful answer to that question. "Well, he – when he's putting his head in it, he can actually be quite –"

But an unintentionally loud burst of laughter stopped her before she could finish.

Michael realized, only when the girls' eyes, including Sara's, were fixed on him, that the laughter had been his.

"No one asked _you_," Gretchen was quick to say, like the intrusive laugh had been an unforgiveable security breach on her part. "And if you would stop staring at us all the time, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it."

Lisa and Nika were quick to nod their agreement, throwing in a few words for good faith, but Sara was frowning – and it was rather impressive, the authority she could summon with her hair wet, dressed in a one-piece swimsuit.

"Gretchen, don't be so –"

"What? You like him staring at you?" She laughed her queenly laughter. "That'd be just like you, Sara, throwing away the greatest catch in the school and taking interest in some measly little –"

Sara tugged on Gretchen's arms and drew her away before Michael could find out just precisely what he was. The two other girls followed obediently, and Michael jumped in the pool when his name got called, in a graceful dive.

It was a shame she minded, the girl, Sara; about his being picked on. A waste of energy.

He wished he could tell her things like that meant nothing to him, nothing. Words disappeared, left no marks like belts, and even those were just flesh wounds, you could will them away if you focused hard enough, created a dark pit where you dropped all the nuisance, the things that slowed you down.

Michael was through with the swimming exercise in no time – he was a good swimmer, faster than the boys he raced against, even the athletic ones who were so at ease with soccer or basketball, and whose bulky muscles were unused to the fluidity of this new environment.

"That was good, Scofield," the coach said to him with a slightly interested glance as he hoisted himself out of the pool. "You used to swim in your former school?"

"Yes sir."

"Part of the team?"

He shook his head, and used the back of his hand to wipe the water dripping down his chin. "No. I was part of the cleaning crew there, too. They let me use the pool when I wanted so long as I cleaned up after myself."

The coach gave a long, half-absent nod. "Y-es. Well – d'you mind doing another round for me? If I pair you up with someone a little more your level. Let's say," he scratched his head, "Burrows?"

Michael swiveled in time to catch the glare in his brother's green eyes, at the other end of the room. Lincoln was wiping his head with a towel, looking ever more towering in his swim trunks, a heap of muscles and sinews.

"Not afraid of a little competition, are you?" Said the coach, Michael was sure, with no ill-spirit at all. "I got this kid here, seems a natural, wouldn't mind if I made you race for it, just so I can see how good he is?"

Michael opened his mouth but said nothing.

So he took it his brother had been the best swimmer here, at least, until now.

Lincoln stepped closer, eyes cold as a shark's. "I don't mind at all, sir."

But the sound of the bell ringing signaled the end of the class in a suspiciously appropriate timing.

The coach raised his shoulders, with a smile. "That's a rain check, then. Next class, I want the two of you in your best shape, okay?" He turned to Michael. "Burrows is plenty busy with basketball, but I'm still missing members for my swim team – sports is the way to good scholarships, you know?"

"Uh – sure." Michael calculated what words to say so as to get out of this room as fast as possible. "Well, I gotta –"

"Right, boys. Get outta here," he waved them away with his hand as they walked in silence toward the boys' locker room.

Lincoln was an odd blend of cold and smoldering next to him. Ignoring each other was their usual mode of treating each other and yet, it never seemed to get easier, with every day that went by.

…

It was only when the school day was over that Michael finally relaxed. After four p.m., when the school emptied, all the rush of the previous hours just vanished from the halls, and every noise became like a ghost, rare enough to startle you.

Unhurried, without feeling the need to whistle or mutter to himself to break the majesty of silence, Michael changed into his dark-blue uniform and started sweeping the floor, emptying the dust bins, mindlessly gathering fragments of the pupils' life revealed through their debris.

He looked at the floor rather than in front of him.

Kit-Kat wrappers, plastic coffee cups, chewed pieces of gums hardened like the eye of an insect.

He heard her voice before he saw her, as he neared the auditorium.

It wasn't unusual – he _had_ caught a few whiffs of the play's rehearsal more than once, but today, because no one spoke back to her, he knew she was alone.

Broom in hand, not looking at the floor now or anything, he followed her voice like a golden thread. The corridor he'd taken led him directly backstage, where he was sheltered behind the thick red curtain that separated him from the stage.

"But, good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven –"

The sound of some clattering made her fall silent, and Michael realized too late he had kicked into some box of props with his elbow.

"Who's there?"

She turned around.

As things were, he could only see her shadow on the curtain, a slim graceful silhouette cut out of darkness.

Of course, that couldn't have been more wrong.

_She_ was the one that stood in the light, smart, popular, and unafraid to let the world see her for what she was.

"Er –" He stammered.

His first thought had been to tread back where he had come from hoping for her not to spot him, but that would risk scaring her, and besides, if she _did_ catch him, it would make him look all the guiltier.

"Just me."

Her hand shot from between the red veil and soon the thick draperies glided up to discover her thin elfin face.

"Oh."

Her voice betrayed some embarrassment.

"Do you need me to clear the room?"

"No, no. You can stay." He shot a glance at the empty rows of seats behind her. "Lincoln couldn't spare the extra time to practice, could he?"

Her face became slightly tighter. "Not today. Listen, Michael –"

A strange tingle spread down his neck.

It wasn't so surprising she should know his name, but it was a startling, pleasurable thing to hear her say it.

Probably, though, she had heard it from Lincoln. He had to remember she was part of his brother's circle, that she was bound to look at him from _his_ point of view.

_And what am I to him, exactly?_

_An arrogant brat?_

_An unrelatable alien-brained freak?_

"About what Gretchen said at the pool – that was really rude. I'm sorry she was like that."

"Why would you apologize for how your friends are?"

That was one of the great mysteries of social life, to Michael. As if affinities translated to shared responsibility in what one member of the group said. As if, in all the small circles that made up the world of high school, every student was like a limb, and if it started to show signs of rottenness, it had to be cut out immediately before it spread to the rest of the organism.

"Well," Sara said, "then I'm sorry I didn't speak up."

"You think I mind what people say about me?"

He didn't sound defensive but genuinely interested.

Sara couldn't deny there was something fascinating about how absolutely different he was from other kids at school.

There was an out-of-worldliness about him, blended with a complete ease with what he was, that couldn't fail to intrigue.

"I don't know. But I mind, I guess."

"Why?"

He relaxed his hold on the broom. Forgot the uniform he was wearing.

From the moment he had first seen her, in history class, he had found it inexplicably pleasant to look at her, and now, up close, and without having to wonder whether he was embarrassing her, he appreciated it as a full-blown joy.

Her wide, smooth forehead, strong cheekbones, and the thick locks of auburn hair that framed her face. The hazel eyes that looked almost too wide, too hungry for knowledge. The slim hands that took notes at an impressive speed.

None of this _explained_ his interest in her. Rather, her appearance became interesting because it was hers, because of all the depths it hinted, teasing the curious observer.

Interested as he was in solving problems, it hadn't yet crossed Michael's mind to really ponder why he even liked this girl, whose popularity and social standing alone should have placed a barrier between them like a thick ice wall.

Preferences were inexplicable, Michael thought. How could you logically explain why you liked cherries, or hated them?

"I don't know," she said again. "It doesn't seem fair."

For a second, her eyes lowered to the broom, then flashed back to his face; he pretended he hadn't noticed.

"You want to do more lines? Don't mind me. I like listening. Shakespeare's always good company."

"You like Hamlet?"

"Sure."

He didn't add that he _didn't_ like Lincoln's take on him. That would have been unnecessary, and besides, for all he knew, Sara would spread the information and that would give his brother all the excuse he needed to treat him to a nice beating one day outside of school, which was clearly what he was craving.

But that sounded unfair, he thought.

To Sara rather than to Lincoln. She didn't look like the gossipy type, despite being surrounded by its endlessly-chattering halo all the time.

"Well," she said, "do you want to read some with me?" With an apologetic smile. "I'm missing someone to throw my lines at."

"I think I'd like that." Then, he was the one to look at the broom. "But I'm on the clock."

"Right. Well –"

The rest of her sentence floated into silence. Easy greetings and goodbyes were hard to give to someone so profoundly atypical.

"See you tomorrow."

"See you."

She vanished behind the curtain, and he was sure to be as audible as possible as he walked away from the backstage area.

It'd be more comfortable for her to think he'd gone, so she could rehearse freely. An audience made up of one person only would be worse than row upon row of strangers, whose faces the spotlights would make indistinguishable anyway.

And it was tempting, to only _pretend_ he had gone, to stay and enjoy the river-like sound of her voice, the lines she would speak for his pleasure only.

_'__We know what we are, but know not what we may be.'_

It would have been something, he felt, to be able to stand directly before her, to hear her say these lines, to _him_ – well, Hamlet – and to speak back, to disappear with her in the world of Shakespearean tragedy, let passion carry them away far away from the blandness of high school and adolescent life.

Over the years, Michael had gotten used to that feeling of not belonging, to being an outsider wherever he wandered, and he supposed, if he had judged rightly, that girl, Sara, belonged inside that school as little as he did.

Where she did belong, or himself, for that matter, he couldn't say. Just that it wasn't in this time and place.

And maybe that's why he liked looking at her; like two odd fishes in a bowl, swimming in the opposite direction from everyone else.

Maybe that was his way of saying, without words, that he'd recognized her; and if she wanted a place where she could leave the burdensome package of her everyday life behind, he would meet her there. Anytime.

…

**End Notes**: Hi you all, hope you enjoyed this chapter. Some of you might be wondering why I put in so much hostility between Lincoln and Michael from the start – honestly, their relationship is one of the things I enjoy exploring the most in fanfiction, if it's something that bothers you a lot, I totally understand. But I've always felt that between two people so different, there could be a lot more complex emotions to explore; also, that flash of smugness from Michael's character in the flashback episode from season one always made me want to dig deeper. Also, I can't wait to see them discover and learn from each other. Please share your thoughts in the comment section!


	5. Chapter 5

"Okay, then. Here we go. You boys ready?"

Michael and Lincoln exchanged vicious looks.

It was incredible that both achieved that level of seriousness while only wearing swim trunks, Sara thought.

A few seconds later, Gretchen confirmed Sara wasn't the only one to have noticed the tension between the two brothers when she said, "My God, is it just me, or has Phys. Ed never been so sexy?"

Sara blushed and lowered her eyes to her naked feet and the blue tiling of the ground near the basins.

"It's stupid," she said, low enough that only her friends would hear. "To have them do this, now, in front of everyone. Just for the sake of competition."

"I wouldn't say stupid."

"You've already said sexy."

"And I stand by it. My, my. That Scofield kid sure looks more fit than he does under those turtleneck sweaters, wouldn't you say?"

"I hadn't noticed."

Really, Sara tried to avoid looking at her classmates' bodies when they were in Phys. Ed, and the usually concealed parts were now exposed for all to see. Out of principle. And common decency.

It _was_ true, now that Gretchen had pointed it out, she couldn't fail to observe that there was more muscle to Michael than she would have imagined. He held his own, even as he stood just next to his brother, who was the bigger man by far. Michael's muscles were slimmer but looked firm to the touch. The thought of pressing her palm to his chest and seeing whether his skin was as cold as he looked, whether his heartbeat was as quiet as the impassive mask on his face, hit Sara so suddenly, she did not look up, even to see the two brothers dive head first into the pool as the coach blew into his whistle once to give them their cue.

What happened next was over so fast, Sara barely had time to catch a glimpse of the action.

The two boys swam for the finish line in a mad race, splashing water with every move. Though it only lasted a minute, at most, Sara noticed that while Lincoln had opted for a front crawl, Michael swam with his head underwater for the whole time that their race lasted.

Really, he disappeared into the chemical blueness of the swimming pool as if the world above the surface was far from his natural element, and those cold depths were much more like himself than any of the students here could understand.

"Done!"

The brothers hoisted themselves out of the pool, as the coach broke into gleeful laughter.

"Good job, boys! Really good job!"

"Who won?" Sara said in a low voice.

Gretchen hissed sarcastically. "Are you for real?"

Honestly, Sara had been too absorbed by Michael's body underwater, moving with breathtaking ease, to notice which one of them made it to the other side of the pool first.

"Michael," Gretchen sounded annoyed. "Michael won."

Just as she said the words, the coach slammed Michael so hard on his glistening back, Sara couldn't help but wince.

"Amazing, boy. Isn't he amazing, Burrows?"

Sara's eyes flew to Lincoln in a heartbeat.

His gaze was smoldering so, it was a wonder that the water on his body didn't instantly evaporate.

"Yep."

The one word sounded rancid with hate.

Sara's heart tightened in pangs of sympathy for Lincoln, who was so proud, he never let even teachers call him on his being wrong.

Oh, he must hate this, and in front of the whole class –

"What a stupid, cruel thing to have them do this," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

The girls themselves were only wearing their swimming suits. Lincoln and Michael's little competition had taken place just before class. It was worse, Sara felt, because Lincoln couldn't even storm into the locker room and cool down on his own.

"Would you relax?" Gretchen sighed. "Your boyfriend won it, didn't he?"

Sara had been blushing before, a nearly necessary fact when she was barely dressed, and watching two barely-dressed boys compete for success.

But the heat that flew into her cheeks at this moment was beyond anything.

"My _what_?"

Gretchen looked around, to make sure no one was listening. Nika and Lisa had wandered closer to the pool to talk to the boys.

"You heard me. I've seen you steal glances at each other in the halls, in class, in the cafeteria."

The air tasted of chlorine and impotent silence in Sara's mouth. She wanted to say something, to laugh, to make it sound like the thought was absurd.

It _was_.

So why did she look like her parents had caught her with her hand in the cookie jar?

"It's actually really lovely," Gretchen said, though her tone had taken that cruel edge of cutting sarcasm that made her one of the most ruthless girls at school. "A little creepy. But creepy's the new sexy, apparently."

"It's not. We're not –"

"Oh, soften up, S, will you? I won't tell anyone."

"There's nothing _to tell_."

But Gretchen's red-painted grin looked unconvinced. Even before she answered, still with that sarcastic tone, Sara knew that, in all likelihood, this was going to be a problem.

"Sure," she said. "Sure."

…

Sara didn't mean to talk to Michael, that day, after the class was over, and they were all getting out of the pool, glistening limbs hurrying to the locker-room.

After what Gretchen had said, she'd sooner not so much as look at him for a very long time.

And yet, she lingered on her way to the showers, took tiny footsteps on the blue tiling, waited until the girls had long disappeared ahead of her.

A few steps away, the coach was keeping Michael behind, saying, "You know, you've got to think about your future, boy. Scholarships and such things. Swimming's not as famous as football, but it can get you into college."

Michael kept silent, patiently.

Any boy would have been awkwardly nodding by now, but he just waited, as if he didn't feel the pull of social constraints closing in on him.

"Well," the coach sounded awkward, as if to make up for the fact that Michael didn't, "will you think about it?"

"Okay." Michael said. "Does that mean I can use the pool, if I clean up behind me?"

That put a smile on the coach's face. He brought his palm over Michael's shoulder, "Sure thing, kid. Now go on, scram. I don't want to put you behind."

Sara suddenly realized almost all the other students had cleared out, and she didn't want it to look like she'd been listening.

She rushed toward the locker-room, staring at her feet, so she didn't see Michael coming until she was bumping against him. She'd walked into a straight line while he went around the basins, their paths crossing at the intersection between the girls' and the boys' respective locker-rooms.

"Sorry," she said.

"It's okay."

Sara had to crane her neck to look up at him. It struck her how tall he was, up close – they had never stood so close to each other before.

The muscles of his chest had felt warm and slippery when she'd bumped into him, leaving a teasing prickling sensation on her own skin.

She was being ridiculous, just ridiculous. All that awkwardness was just due to what Gretchen had said earlier. Damn her. She was good at that, planting nasty thoughts, all so she could watch and enjoy the show from her throne at the top of the world. Well, not the world – school. But at that age, the two things felt like one and the same.

"You know, the coach's not going to let you off the hook, now."

She said it just to break the silence, because Michael looked all too comfortable with it while her own breathing was getting shallow, ragged.

Why did they have to be in their swim suits right now, so every blush, every symptom of her discomfort lay naked and exposed before his eyes?

"You might as well join the team."

"I'll see," he said, with a control that was almost impossible to find in teenagers their age. "I have a lot of things to do just with school and work. And I'm not really a team-player."

_Like Lincoln_, she thought.

In football, Linc was the star, the number-one player. It worked, because he was good. But in truth, from what she'd seen of his games, he wasn't the type to pass the ball, would sooner take the risk of having it fall into the wrong hands than share the spotlight.

Maybe the two brothers were more alike than they realized.

Though, of course, Michael's place was in the shadows, not the light.

"Are you practicing later today?"

His question took her by surprise.

"You mean, Ophelia?"

"Yes." He saw her confusion and said calmly, "I like to listen to you, when I'm doing the floor of the auditorium. I thought you'd noticed."

And she had, although she hadn't fully acknowledged it.

It hadn't been just the one time when he'd surprised her practicing, alone.

Now that his words broke the veil of mystery around those late hours, at the auditorium, she realized she had seen him, a shadowy figure moving in the background, and his deep-blue eyes following her, still without a trace of embarrassment or restraint.

"You don't mind?" He said.

"No."

It felt surreal, suddenly, to be talking about the very thing she had pushed to the edge of her awareness for the past few weeks.

To be looking at him directly, so close to him, without anything between them.

It struck Sara, suddenly, that she did like this boy, who behaved strangely, and was utterly unashamed of his strangeness.

And what Gretchen had said before class felt unimportant, just a bee sting to be endured and ignored.

"Cool," Michael said.

The pool area was deserted now.

He headed toward his locker-room. She had no idea she was going to stop him until the words were out.

"Hey, do you want to hang out later?"

He turned back to her, looking surprised. Not nearly as surprised as she was.

She threw herself into an explanation before he could ask, _You mean, like a date?_

"A bunch of us are going out to the Beehive after class. It's a coffeehouse near the school."

"I know."

A lump hard as rock went down her throat.

"I just thought – it could be nice."

His silence was not cruel or mocking. Still, she felt like the coach for a minute, with Michael unable to share into her embarrassment.

"Will your friends be there?"

"Probably."

"Will Lincoln?"

She swallowed. "Maybe."

He thought for a moment. "I don't know if it's a good idea. Your friends don't like me very much, and I can't say that I do."

Before Sara could stop herself, she heard the words pass her lips in one breath of blunt honesty, "I like you."

A flash of warmth washed over his blue eyes.

Sara's heartbeat quickened a little, but she wasn't blushing.

"Oh," he said. "Then I will. Come."

She tightened her hands over her chest. What a strange thing, to be there, talking to him like this. Maybe it would feel unreal moments from now.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay."

She smiled, and he gave her his odd, distant look of admiration in reply.

"Gee," Gretchen said when she finally made her way to the locker room, "what took you so long?"

The girls had almost finished dressing by this point.

Sara just smiled, a little breathless. "Nothing."

She didn't tell them what had happened, not because she found it embarrassing, but because it was just hers, for the moment, and she wanted to wait as long as she could until she had to share it with anyone.

She said, "I'll tell you tonight."

…

**End Notes**: Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section. Take care!


	6. Chapter 6

"Come on," Fernando said, "are you really not going to come tonight?"

They were shooting hoops in the backyard, at Lincoln's house. Lincoln hadn't improved his grades as much as his folks wanted and he was technically still grounded, but if Nando came over right after school, they had a couple of hours ahead of them before his foster family came home from work.

"I don't know," Lincoln said, and dumped the ball to the ground instead of throwing it. "I'm tired of this. You want to come in for a drink?"

"Sure."

They both went into the kitchen, and Lincoln grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge like it was nothing.

He wanted Nando to think it was.

Not that his foster dad knew precisely how many beers were in this fridge, in this house, and there was no way that he wasn't going to give Lincoln one hell of a lecture about those two missing cans.

"Is it just because of what happened in PE?"

Nando's voice had gotten earnest and hesitant.

Lincoln leant against the back of the living room couch, opened his beer and drank, pretending he hadn't heard.

But to his increasing frustration, his friend insisted. "It was just a stupid race, Linc. There was nothing at stake –"

"Jesus, would you get off my back, man?"

"Sorry."

Lincoln had a couple of sips, but it was no good now. Fernando had pushed the subject in too far, so that Lincoln's determination to avoid it was too much like showing weakness.

"I don't _care_ that the kid could outswim me, okay? I wouldn't care if he could outswim Aquaman. It's just – it's so typical. So much like Michael, to just walk in a room and have everyone's eyes on him, to be good at something without even trying. That's just our childhood all over, people gawking at him. How fast can Michael read, how many puzzles can he do in one hour."

"I don't think he asked for that, though. The coach just made it happen."

"Didn't fight it, did he?" Lincoln said. He had to resist not clenching his fist around his can and spilling beer all over the floor. "I'll tell you what, one of these days, I'd just like competing against him in something _I_'m good at. Can you imagine that? If I challenged him to a duel, just him and me, with no one around? Michael can't throw a punch to save his life. He'd probably just crawl into a ball and hope to die."

Lincoln took a long enough swallow that he finished what was left of his beer in just one go.

Nando's eyes were embarrassed, trying not to show judgment.

"What?"

"You ever think maybe he doesn't deserve all the shit you give him?"

"Are you kidding me?"

It didn't look like he was.

Fernando shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, man. You think he always wins, but that's not really how it looks from the outside, is it? You're popular, you have friends."

For a second, Lincoln was very afraid that Nando was going to add, _You have parents_.

To which Lincoln would have replied, _Foster parents_, which would sound shitty, would make him sound like a brat.

But Fernando had no reason to know about Michael's family situation, or lack thereof.

"You know what, never mind," Nando said. "We don't have to talk about this. Why don't you come to the Beehive tonight, though? The rest of the team's going. And those girls from history class, including the one you like. Sara."

"Oh, good," on a sarcastic tone. "Because I'm not frustrated enough as it is today."

"You've made your move on her or what?"

"Like, ages ago. She said she wanted to be friends. So, I'm playing friends."

"Heck. I'd tell you there's a pile of girls waiting for you to ask them out, but since she got you signing up for the high school play, I guess you're in too deep to backpedal."

"Shut up."

But the air between them was all right again.

Telling each other to shut up was their way of saying they loved each other.

"But I forgot," Nando said, "you're supposed to be grounded."

And that was actually what determined Lincoln to go.

…

Sara was so nervous, she barely paid attention to what the girls were saying, in Gretchen's car, on their way to the 'Hive, and for the first hour or so that they got there, sat at a small table upfront, and ordered their drinks.

Gretchen always ordered for the four of them without consulting them beforehand. If Gretchen wanted iced tea, then that's what all four girls were having. Nika and Lisa were too docile to try to go against it, and Sara just didn't have the patience. Going out for a girls' night in itself was a way to indulge her friends, and to force herself to take a night out from her studies. What did it matter, what she was having, when she was not having her way in any case?

When she was out with the girls, Sara was already transgressing the rules of her private ecosystem. So it didn't matter that she never actually tried to get anything she wanted during those evenings.

The way she had invited Michael to join them earlier at the pool flashed through her mind, and she mentally added, _At least, not until tonight_.

"Yes," Gretchen said when the waiter stopped by their table, "we'll have four virgin martinis, please."

He was wearing such a blasé look, the judgment on his face barely transpired.

"What?" Gretchen said. "It's _virgin_." Sara thought she heard her mutter, "Unlike myself."

"Sorry. We don't do non-alcoholic cocktails until eight p.m. Or regular cocktails, as a matter of fact."

Gretchen sighed, as if the stupidness of that place, of this whole town, existed only to try her patience.

"All right, just – give us chai lattes. Skimmed milk. Sweeteners, no sugar. Can you believe that guy?" She said when the waiter had walked away without a look back.

Sara wasn't really listening, assuming Lisa and Nika could fill in for her in the conversation. When Gretchen wasn't in a martial mood, she usually let it slide, or just teased about how Sara's head was always in the clouds.

It wasn't; not tonight.

At this moment, if Sara's head was anywhere, then it was back at the swimming pool, where she could still see herself speak those words _– I like you_ – could still smell the chlorine in the air, see the water dripping down Michael's skull, drop after drop.

"Sara, are we boring you?" Gretchen asked with a slicing tone.

She was in a bad mood. In such a bad mood, in fact, that Nika and Lisa looked alert on the edge of their seats, like Gretchen might demand a blood sacrifice from them at any time.

"Well –" Sara said.

"Please, do think about it. Every girl in school would only die to sit where you're sitting."

Sara scoffed, genuinely amused, without meaning to pour oil on the fire. "I'm sorry, I don't think my humble self can fully enjoy the queenliness of your presence."

"You're making fun of me now?"

"Come on, Gretch, when you talk about girls willing to die to be your friend, you're making fun of yourself –"

"Hi there."

The girls looked up.

The boys had arrived.

It was all wrong, too early.

Usually, Lincoln's team of football players only came after nine, when they were already slightly drunk, and the girls could pretend they were on their way out, so they would have to be coaxed into sticking around longer and hanging out.

One of the boys stepped closer to their table; it was that boy always practicing ball with Lincoln, whether in the yard or in the halls. _Nando_. "Well," he said, "Gretch, aren't you looking fine this evening."

She gave a disgusted snort.

The waiter came over with their drinks, and the boys had to move away, couldn't possibly make it look like they were hovering.

Sara's eyes followed Lincoln, who barely looked at her before he led his group away to the pool table. Indifference was the attitude girls were expected to find attractive in boys.

Tonight, Lincoln looked especially good in his blue jeans, tight shirt and leather jacket. But Sara wasn't looking at him because she was mentally pining over his handsome looks.

Really, she just wished that they could have talked – talked normally, like they did when there was no one else around.

Sara sighed. That perpetual dance between girls and boys, where the girls feigned disgust, the boys indifference, sickened her beyond belief.

If she'd gotten to speak to Lincoln alone, then she could have said something about inviting his brother to join them. Even if it hadn't been for that humiliating race in PE, something told her that Lincoln wouldn't have liked the surprise.

But now, if Sara actually came up to the pool table and asked Lincoln if they could speak in private, then everyone in the 'Hive would think for sure they had sneaked away from the crowd for a romantic interlude. The rumor would spread around school, and by recess, tomorrow morning, it would be common knowledge that they had had sex in the parking lot behind the Beehive.

Thoughtlessly, Sara punched the cinnamon stick into her drink with her spoon.

There was just no use, no way for her to communicate with Lincoln in the complex tangles of social expectations.

Maybe, one day, when they were both adults, they could have a successful friendship.

"You're so off tonight," Gretchen complained.

Lisa and Nika had gone to the bathroom. They always went in pairs.

"Sorry," Sara said.

But before she had much more time to brood, the door of the Beehive opened and Michael walked in.

The sight of him was absurd, somehow, outside high school. He was wearing another one of his thick long-sleeved sweaters, that just didn't look the same on him after she'd seen what was under it.

There was no smile on his face, but he looked calm, unbothered by this unusual habitat, and his eyes skimmed the room candidly, looking for Sara.

He found her.

Her heartbeat rocketed at the crossroads of his blue eyes, her hands tightened around her mug obliviously.

"What's he doing here?" Gretchen scoffed.

Sara didn't even think to look outraged. She was too numb, didn't want to look away from that safe, suddenly quiet place she had found in Michael's gaze.

"I invited him," she said.

"You what?"

Sara got to her feet.

"What are you doing?" Gretchen grabbed her forearm, and Sara finally looked back at her.

"Saying hello, of course."

"What gave you the thought it was all right for you to ask him?"

Sara wanted to laugh, to say Gretchen was taking herself way too seriously, as always; but for some reason, she couldn't help from sinking into seriousness herself.

Nika and Lisa had just walked out of the bathroom and had braked before regaining their seats, as if they had just walked in on a public execution. And, of course, Sara was playing the part of the prisoner who was about to get her head chopped off.

What was worse, though, Sara could see with the corner of her eye that the boys around the pool table were also looking at Michael.

She couldn't focus on Lincoln right now, but she could imagine the acid hate that must be spreading through his bloodstream, his hands becoming fists around the cue stick.

"This is a free country, isn't it?" Sara said, meeting Gretchen's fiery glare with firmness. She was tired of humoring her.

"You don't just ask people to join us when we go out. You run it through me."

"I don't need your permission to do anything."

"Please," Gretchen said. "This isn't a democracy."

Sara turned back, trying to find Michael; maybe he had watched the ridiculous scene with Gretchen and just left, to hide from the craziness.

Instead, she found he was standing by their table, so close, she let out an incriminating gasp.

"Hi," he said.

His eyes lowered to her arm, still in Gretchen's grasp, and Sara broke away from her immediately.

"Hi," she repeated, feeling stupid.

Gretchen shook her head, her lips widening into a silent laugh of disbelief. In the background, the whole room seemed to have frozen up, Lisa and Nika just standing there, waiting for a cue from Gretchen to know how to react, while by the pool table, the boys were all alert, their eyes going from Lincoln to Michael. They, too, were waiting for his response.

Sara wanted to laugh at how absurd it was.

_Look at us_, she thought, _sheep unquestioningly rallying behind their shepherd_.

Why had she ever allowed herself to be a part of this?

Lincoln's green eyes looked ablaze with anger, and he looked back when he caught Sara glancing at him. All that rage wasn't meant for her, she knew, still, it shook her to find herself on the other end of it.

It lasted maybe three seconds, her taking in the scene around them, realizing just how explosive the atmosphere in the room had gotten.

Then, Sara looked back at Michael, and his eyes were still that deserted shade of quiet, unbreakable silence.

He looked like an angel, she thought, indifferently floating above the mutilated remains of a battlefield.

Suddenly, Sara realized that she could finally place it, what attracted her so much about Michael Scofield.

It was that air about him, like nothing about the pettiness of their world got to him in the least.

Those kids could hate him, they could point and laugh and do all the cruel things that high school teens do to misfits, but they couldn't touch him.

They couldn't touch him.

"I told you," Michael said, without a trace of reproach or embarrassment. "This probably wasn't a good idea. I don't belong here."

Sara didn't know what happened with the others, if Gretchen was still smoldering in her seat, if Lincoln was still staring daggers at them from the pool table.

She only looked at Michael, like he was the last sane person in the universe.

"You're right," she said.

He didn't look disappointed.

The cold mask on his face was without a breach.

Then she put her hand in his, without giving herself time to blush at her own forwardness, and she said, "Let's get out of here."

…

**AN**: Thanks for all your support on the last chapter. Please let me know what you think of this one.


	7. Chapter 7

**Warnings**: This chapter contains some swearing.

…

The evening air was cool as they walked, side by side, silent.

The hand Sara had used to take his felt burning hot, brushing against her side stupidly. She had let go of it just after they left the diner.

The more distance they put between them and the friends she had walked out on, the more Sara's head started spinning, as she took in all the consequences that tonight may have, everything she might have brought upon herself, just by asking Michael Scofield to meet her at the Beehive.

Did Gretchen think she had asked him out? Did Michael?

And _had_ she?

Would Gretchen view her as the enemy now, treat her the way she treated the students she disliked, not just ignoring them but singling them out as free game for the others to humiliate? Yes, Gretchen could be mean, and Sara had always known it, but her long-lasting friendship with her had always seemed to make it her duty to love her anyway.

But what now? Now that Sara had broken the implicit invisible rules of their relationship, by claiming her independence, by betraying the game of make-believe the girls played, pretending everything had to go through Gretchen, that she was 'Queen Bee' and they were all docile subjects.

To Gretchen, maybe it had been more than a game.

"You don't mind to walk?" Michael asked.

Sara wrenched herself from her thoughts, looking back at the boy who had without warning wreaked havoc in the school's peaceful ecosystem.

And whom she had liked, without knowing why, from the second she had set eyes on him.

"No," she said.

"Okay."

It was getting dark enough for the streetlamps to start lighting up, any time now. Sara felt she should add something, but she didn't want it to sound like she was defending Gretchen – already, it felt ridiculous that she had ever excused her behavior, to herself and others.

"I'm sorry about what happened at the Beehive," it was trite and easy, but it needed saying anyway. "I don't understand why they were like that."

"It's okay," Michael said, sounded like he meant it. "I never understand why people do things, either."

Sara thought he was going to keep going, explain that that was why he preferred to stay alone. But he left it there.

She shoved her hands into her pockets. Her fingers were numb with the cold. She was only wearing a jacket, had neglected to take a coat since Gretchen had picked her up at her house and was supposed to drop her off when they were done with the evening.

It occurred to Sara that she had no idea how she was going to get home.

"Where are we going?" She asked.

"My place."

Sara froze on the spot.

She didn't mean to, and Michael stopped also, looking surprised, like he was trying to determine how this could have offended her.

"Is that not okay?"

Sara tried to really think about it, to think past the uproar of screaming thoughts raging inside her head.

What would people say at school? Just being alone two minutes with a boy was enough to spark rumors about them having kissed or touched or in any way shared a romantic moment.

Suddenly, it felt like they could see her now, an ocean of whispering faces, watching her follow a boy she barely knew, follow him _home_, alone.

For a moment, Sara felt overwhelmed by the sheer flow of voices breaking loose inside her head.

It took her a while to regain the quietness she had felt, at the Beehive, when she'd left with Michael, and for her to realize that she didn't care, what those people said or thought about her. Not remotely.

Why _should_ she care, when their world was a cobweb of pointless pretense, and each thread could potentially prove deadly if you touched it, so their whole lives became an exhausting routine of jumping through hoops, walking on eggshells, trying desperately to avoid the truth about others and yourself?

"Sure," she said. "I mean, as long as you don't –" She tried to think of how she could put this without turning scarlet, and finished by asking. "Aren't your parents home?"

"They're dead." He said.

And then, Sara did blush, because she knew this, ought to have remembered. Lincoln had once referred to his folks as his 'foster parents' and she had found out from Gretchen that his biological parents had died long ago; and, of course, his parents were also Michael's.

"No," he hurried, "you don't have to look like that. It's been years." He spoke the next words as if they were a timeless, undeniable truth. "I live alone now."

…

For some reason, the words 'I live alone' didn't fully take their meaning in Sara's mind until she stepped inside Michael's apartment; then, the evidence of his words was immediately striking.

Sara had never been inside an apartment this small.

There was one main room, furnished with a sofa, a refrigerator and a sink to wash the dishes. No table. No bed. No cooker. One door that opened on a tiny bathroom, with the shower and the toilet nearly colliding.

"Do you want some water?"

"Sure."

The utter lack of embarrassment about him made it impossible for her to feel awkward.

"I didn't realize that's what you meant, about living alone," she said.

He laughed. It was so surprising Sara's arms broke into gooseflesh. The smile on his face brightened every feature on his face, and for a second, she had a flashing vision of the very handsome man he would become.

"What else can 'alone' mean?"

Still, she felt no shyness, no embarrassment. "I mean," she said, "you're just a teenager. Like all of us."

And, she implied, all of them lived with grownups. Not that, at seventeen, Sara found it unthinkable to be left to herself. Really, she thought she'd enjoy it; but it didn't make it any less strange for a high school student to be living alone.

_Alone_, she thought of the word again, because the way Michael had said it made her rediscover its subtlest shades and nuances.

Sara realized she couldn't even grasp what it would mean, to have that much freedom. To eat when you were hungry, sleep when you were tired, get out for a walk when you wanted to, without having to warn anyone.

Although she saw extremely little of her father, Sara's life was still punctuated by family obligations. In the morning, before school, Sara had to get up half an hour early so she had time to catch a glimpse of Frank Tancredi before he left to work. He never had breakfast, and it didn't really look like these brief encounters with his daughter in the morning filled him with joy, but they were tradition, and Sara had never thought of trying to do away with them. By then, he would already be wearing a suit, and he'd sip coffee with the morning news covering half his face; he'd acknowledge Sara's presence formally and she would eat a bowl of cereal or some peanut butter toast in silence while he read.

Sometimes, he made a comment about some article, but it always sounded like he was speaking to himself.

Then, Sara didn't see her father until dinner at eight, which would last a little longer, and when they would both formally ask each other one or two questions about their day.

It had never occurred to Sara how much of her life her father continued to shape until she realized she could not begin to grasp the freedom that Michael's solitude must enable.

It didn't look like her remark had embarrassed him. "Well," he said, "I emancipated myself when I was fifteen."

He handed her a glass of water. Sara's jaw dropped a little.

"You've been living alone, for two years?"

"Yeah. It's nothing impressive," he said. "You could do it. Maybe not everyone at school, but you could. Easily."

She could tell he wasn't trying to flatter her.

"I mean, how long have you been able to cook your own meals? A lot of fifteen-year-olds can take care of themselves, never mind seventeen-year-olds. You'd be okay." He shrugged. "It's really okay."

She said, "Okay," and blushed from how stupid she sounded.

Michael sat next to her on the couch and she had a sip of water to give herself an excuse for silence.

Silence with Michael had that peaceful quality that suggested it could be pleasant, but he was still a boy she barely knew.

Besides, he was the kind of person that made you economical with words, trimming the unnecessary fat of speech.

With him, she only wanted to sound clever and witty.

What had he said, earlier, at the pool, about liking to watch her practice in secret? Or was it really a secret when both sides knew about it?

It had been an important moment, she felt, putting some limits to Gretchen's megalomaniac twenty-four-seven pretense, and Michael had been the trigger.

She owed it to him to make this moment matter.

Then she looked up from her glass of water at his cold blue eyes, those eyes that followed her from the shadows in the auditorium, and she felt all this built up importance burst like soap bubbles.

How did he keep awakening this tension inside of her and releasing it, like there was a hidden switch inside her, and he only had the keys to access it?

Because it didn't matter that what she said sounded intelligent, she opened her mouth and heard herself speak the words she had really been wanting to say.

"What happened between you and Lincoln?"

He didn't shrug.

Lincoln would have.

Lincoln shrugged all the time, like even the most sensitive subjects slid right off his shoulders. It had to do with that look – _indifference_.

Michael didn't have to fake it. He already looked like a being from a different world, who could not be touched by earthly concerns.

"Nothing," he said.

Disappointment dropped inside her chest.

She was surprised, not at what he'd said, but that he didn't seem to be lying.

"He hates me. A lot of people do. I don't understand their reasons, but that's just my way of not understanding how people think. Lincoln simply isn't any different from most people I know."

"He's your brother," she breathed.

He stared at her steadily, like he was wondering why she chose to volunteer information he already knew.

"You must love each other," she heard how the words sounded, but no heat swam to her face this time.

Maybe it was magical that Michael had managed to make her feel comfortable, in a place where there wasn't a single item of comfort in sight.

"No," he said.

There was a pause.

"My father and I have nothing in common," she said. "If we didn't live in the same house, there would be no reason for us to ever see each other. We hardly talk. I don't like him. But I love him."

"I see where you're getting at." He said simply. "You and I are different."

"So there really isn't any reason? No bad blood between you? You just – you don't get along, so it makes sense to you that Lincoln looks like he wants to throw you into a wall every time he sees you?"

He laughed again, and it was the same warm prickling surprise in Sara's chest.

"Lincoln's jealous of me," Michael said, on such a natural tone, it was easy to believe him. "He doesn't call it that. It's unattractive, I guess. But he's always been jealous. I drew attention, adults said I was special. It never mattered that he was the one to want it while I hated it."

"Do you ever think you only hated it because you had it?"

Then, Michael was the one to look surprised. His brows creased into a neat, single furrow.

"No," he said. "Do you want to practice your Ophelia?"

His veering off topic was so abrupt, Sara took a second to answer. "Uh – yeah."

She reached down to put her glass on the coffee table, but there was none. Her hand wavered in the air a short while before she put it down on the floor.

"You're ready?" He said.

"What scene?"

She wondered if he knew the whole play by heart. "One. Act three." And then, he started. "If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry."

And Sara's heart started to pound, her lips dry as she stared at him, vibrant from the sheer thrill of his transformation.

He didn't speak the words but became them.

Suddenly, as she looked only into the blue deserts of his eyes, the room disappeared, the couch, the unpleasant brown carpet, and he was Hamlet, taking her to places she had only ever visited alone until this day.

This was more intimate, she felt, than if he had kissed her or made love to her.

And it made sense, all at once, that she couldn't share Michael with her friends or with anyone.

What would she have told them, so they could understand?

_We spoke Shakespeare to each other. It was perfect._

…

Time flew faster than she realized, and by the time she thought of getting home, it was past midnight.

"Oh God," she said, too shocked for actual panic to come into her words. "My dad's going to notice. I never – I'm always home early."

Then came something like pride at the thought that she had spent maybe four hours sitting next to Michael, and nothing from the outside world had managed to bring her out of this fragile universe that came into existence every time they looked at each other and only each other.

She didn't feel hungry then, but when they started walking, the fact that they had skipped dinner altogether became realer, shooting angry pangs in her stomach.

How far was she even from home?

An hour's walk, two?

This was completely insane.

She could imagine Frank waiting for her, sitting at the huge dining table where he would look more judge than father, with his hands joined in silent reproval.

And yet, part of her was still exhilarated, as they continued the conversation where they'd left off at his apartment.

Not only Shakespeare but other things they liked; other things they'd _read_, other worlds to inhabit. Sara would have never thought it could be so easy to talk to a boy. The things she said to Michael that night, she had never said to anyone, not because she considered them private or secret somehow, but simply because it was not the sort of things Gretchen and the girls talked about. After a while of their walking the night side by side, when the heat of his body next to hers had gotten familiar, she even talked to him about med school.

He was interested. Asked her what she had learned and she showed him all the bones in his hand one by one and told them what they were called.

It was only when she was done, and she was holding his hand in his, that she realized what it looked like; but there was only the slightest panic-reflex this time. Who else was around to see them, anyway? The deserted night held no judgment for them.

She kept holding his hand, for a while, testing herself rather than him. He didn't seem to mind or think much of it. Yet again, it never _seemed_ like Michael Scofield minded anything.

Only earlier, when he had been Hamlet, had she seen plain, beautiful traces of emotions on his face.

But then, he hadn't been Michael. He had been sublime, and what they had shared could never pass into words.

"I am sorry," he said at some point, making Sara look up at him. "About your folks. I didn't realize you could get in trouble."

"Oh. Not real trouble," she said, although she had no idea whether that was true.

What kind of thing came to Michael's mind, when she said she would be grounded? What did that imply back when he used to have parents, or at the foster families he had known? No television, no hanging out with friends? Except Michael would hardly do these things of his own volition in the first place. Did he picture her having to go without dinner, or were there worse things he was worried about?

For the first time, she thought life at his foster parents' must have been horrible for him to ask for emancipation so young.

"I never thought of how late it'd be by the time you got home," he said. "Are you hungry?"

He had taken a Kit Kat bar out of his pocket.

The mere sight of the red packing felt transgressive to contemplate.

When Sara's mother was still alive, she had been thorough about the things Sara was never to eat. Everything chocolaty that came in shiny wrappers obviously made the list. Years had gone by, and now, Frank Tancredi hardly minded what his daughter fed on so long as it didn't make too much noise to disturb his news reading.

Still, she couldn't look at candy without sensing the invisible net that her mother had neatly placed around her before she died. Her gift for life.

"No," she said.

He tore the wrapping and started munching it unthinkingly.

Suddenly, Sara thought how amazing it looked, the absolute freedom of a seventeen-year-old. No nets around Michael. Or at least, only those of his own creation.

He only ate half of the bar and put the rest in his pocket. Maybe she would be hungry later. They still had a long walk ahead of them.

What would her friends think, Sara wondered, if they could see her now – if Gretchen and the girls were even still her friends after tonight. Would they say Michael was all wrong, that he didn't take care of her? It mattered to them, when they went on dates, what kind of food the boys gave them to eat, that they minded to be considerate about the girls' needs.

Michael hadn't offered to make her food, but she knew he would have if she had asked him. He didn't give her his jacket in case she was cold, but if she had been, and she had asked him to take off all of his clothes and give them to her for warmth, he probably would have.

It was better never to talk about this to anyone.

…

"Here?" He asked.

They were still a couple of streets away from Sara's house, but she wanted to make sure that if her father was watching out the window, he would only see her come home alone. She'd seen that in a movie.

"Yeah," she said. "Here is fine."

If Michael had been struck by the fanciness of the neighborhood Sara lived in, his face had been impassive as ever.

It was a little over two in the morning now.

Sara had never stayed up so late with a boy before. Or with anyone. When she was tired at school, it was usually from overreading the night before.

"Well," Michael said, "goodbye."

It was only at this second that it struck Sara any girl she knew would have been expecting a kiss tonight.

"Michael?" She called when he had turned around.

She didn't know what to say when he looked back at her. It was only that it was so sudden, his disappearing like that, when what they had shared already felt fragile, dream-like.

"You won't pretend none of this has happened tomorrow at school, will you?"

He looked steadily into her eyes. "I never pretend." He said. "Goodnight."

She watched him walk away into the dim-lit street, and when she thought he might turn around, sensing her gaze, she hurried through the short distance that remained between her and her father's house.

It was a tall, impressive house to first comers. The outside agreed with the inside: fancy rather than luxurious. And tonight, it was even a little impressive to Sara, who had lived there all her life, as she expected to find her father waiting for her somewhere.

But the ground floor was entirely unlit and, like a thief in the night, Sara didn't dare switch on the lights.

With the radiance emanating from her cell phone alone, she guided herself through every room downstairs. Maybe her father had been waiting to catch her off guard, to give her a start. But already, she knew she was pushing it.

It wasn't his style.

Her search proved the ground floor was empty, and most likely than not, Frank Tancredi had gone upstairs to his study after a quick dinner. Sara had warned him she was going out, and he would have gone to sleep around ten, thinking she wouldn't be long.

With a sigh of relief, Sara kicked off her shoes, jacket, and padded to the kitchen. If her father caught her right now, she would say she had eaten little at the pub and had woken up early.

In the kitchen, the moonlight was bright enough outside the window that Sara didn't need to switch on the lights to make herself some toast. Now, it was even more suspicious to stay in the dark, but Sara liked it, liked how it prolonged the whole magical atmosphere that had surrounded her evening with Michael.

She was so hungry, she didn't bother to toast the first two slices of bread, or even spread jam or peanut butter on them.

If her mind had been focused on herself right now, she would have imagined the ghost of her mother watching disapprovingly as she ate. Sara's dead mother was always with her to witness the things Sara felt most guilty about doing.

But at the moment, Sara's mind was still on Michael, and on the text alerts she hadn't been able not to see, lighting up the screen of her cell phone.

From Nika, some ten minutes after Sara had left with Michael, Sara, WTF R U doing? Come back and fix things. Not 2 late.

From Lisa, almost simultaneously: Gretch is so pissed. Get back quick U might be OK. She'll forgive U easier if U let her vent her anger.

Nothing from Gretchen, of course. Queenly silence was more dignified than texting.

The bread became a lump in Sara's throat so quick, she left the fresh slice that she had bothered to butter uneaten.

Alone, it was less easy to be brave than inside Michael's apartment.

Had she fucked up tonight?

Her friendship with Gretchen had always been something she more or less tolerated rather than fought for, a matter of going through the motions, of making life at school easier. Not more pleasant, but easier, because being alone was hard in there, where the loners were easy targets for bullying.

An absurd vision flashed through her brain, of Lincoln Burrows and his friends tossing her into the dumpster in the yard while Gretchen watched from a haughty distance, with her arms crossed over her chest. _I warned you_, the smile on her red lips would say.

Was that what was waiting?

And would she be alone?

Then, another thought came and pacified her a little.

The thought of Michael Scofield, walking home to his empty apartment, with the uneaten half of a Kit Kat bar in his pocket.

…

**End Notes**: Thanks for all your support. Please let me know what you thought of this chapter. I get that Sara's dead mother is often made into an angel-like figure as opposed to her sterner, less likeable father, but I just wanted to subvert that trope a little. It made for more interesting character development. Share your thoughts in the comment section! Take care!


	8. Chapter 8

"You were home late last night," Frank Tancredi remarked, as his daughter sat opposite him at the great narrow dining table where they usually had their routine of breakfasting and news-reading.

Sara sought hiding into the task of peeling an apple, which her cramped stomach suggested she wouldn't be able to eat.

"Was I?" She said. "I didn't realize. I ate with the girls at the pub. You didn't mind?"

"No, no. What time did you get back?"

Sara licked her lips. As she didn't know when precisely her father had gone to bed, it was best to remain vague.

"I didn't see what time it was, but it can't have been very late."

"Before midnight?"

She hesitated, feeling trapped. "Yes, surely before that."

Frank resumed reading his article.

Sara looked down at her apple, half-peeled, and the white exposed flesh filled her mouth with bile.

All night, she'd tossed and turned, thinking maybe she should pretend she was sick today. This was a bad idea, for many reasons. First, it might have given Frank the idea that she'd been out late or drinking at the pub. Second, it would only be delaying the inevitable, and Sara was always the rip-the-band-aid-straight-away kind of person.

Sooner or later, she would have to face school, and to dig her head in the sand for a while would only show Gretchen how much power she had, anyhow.

Sara was well-placed to know that where Gretchen saw vulnerabilities, she would only press her fingernails deeper into the wound to draw blood.

But what should Sara do, when she saw them in the halls?

Just ignore them? That would be immature. But if she went to them, that gave Gretchen an opportunity to ignore her, and wouldn't that be worse?

After an interminable while of sitting in silence while her father sat reading the paper, Sara could finally get up and say she was running late to catch her bus.

"Aren't you hungry?" Frank surprised her by asking. "You didn't eat anything."

"I, uh –" Sara tried to think of something that would turn him off and said, "New diet."

Frank hid his face back in the news as if the mere thought of being his daughter's confidant when it came to what he no doubt viewed as 'girly concerns' were some contagious disease.

"Well, you don't want to be late for school. Off you go, girl."

…

It didn't feel like she was walking into the same building as she had known for three years going on four, that morning, or even a place she was remotely familiar with.

Sara had read about this in some science article last week, how the body reacts to the smell of danger: how, suddenly, the whole world that surrounds you seems to turn into a hostile environment.

Even the bus ride had been off, although Gretchen always drove to school in her own car. Suddenly, the usual chatter of throbbing conversations was no longer just noise to Sara, it was _rumors_. Every pair of eyes that met hers sent her body into alarm, and she hurried into the first empty seat she could find and shoved headphones over her ears, without even plugging them into her phone.

Whether she was being paranoid or just aware to her new situation, she was probably going to find out soon enough.

At school, on her way to her locker, she thought the groups of students parted to let her through like the red sea.

_Am I dangerous to talk to now, poisonous to touch?_

Sara grabbed her history text book and the books for her next periods, too, because she'd rather avoid unnecessary trips down the hall.

When she closed the door of her locker, just like in a movie, there was someone's face waiting for her behind it, though not the face she had expected to see.

Sara gasped and had to tighten her hold around her load of books not to drop any.

"Lincoln. You scared me."

The young man just peered earnestly at her face. His green eyes squinted into small slits, appraising her anew, as if all this time he had been around her and had only recently found out that she was really an especially dangerous snake species.

"Can we talk?" He said.

"Uh – now?"

There was little doubt that the students in the hall were chattering about them, as their eyes were unabashedly fixed in their direction.

And why did all the students seem to be in groups, why was _alone_ such a noticeable dangerous state in high school?

Lincoln stared back at her, unmerciful. "Yeah."

Sara swallowed. "Okay. Let's just not get late for class –"

"Is Michael your boyfriend now?"

Her jaw dropped at the suddenness of it. She'd expected they were going to walk away, to somewhere more private. Though probably, Sara disappearing with another boy would not have made things easier for her.

"No," she said.

But at the same time, she was wondering just how true that answer was. Though she definitely had not asked him out in any traditional way, and their evening together last night could hardly qualify as a regular 'date', maybe they would never be anything that fit the preestablished labels of her schoolmates.

Lincoln's voice hadn't softened, nor had the steel green look in his eyes. "Because it looked like that, from a distance."

"Well, it didn't feel like that to me. And I don't think he –"

"No, you don't really trouble your head about boys' feelings, do you? Sending mixed messages, as long as your own head is clear, that's all right with you."

"You're being a jerk. Can we not make this about something it isn't?"

He sighed, "I feel like everything's about something coded with you. Like it's all games."

Now, this wasn't fair, and Sara wasn't going to have it. "I've been nothing but straight with you, Linc. I said I wanted to be friends, that's all, and that's what we've been doing. Exactly what is coded about that?"

"So where'd you go?"

"What?"

"With _Michael_," he spat the word like it was a disgusting lump of dirt.

Sara slammed the door of her locker, vaguely wondering if, from afar, this looked like a quarrel between lovers.

"You know what? That's really none of your –"

"Burrows."

Sara felt like Gretchen's slim hand had snuck into her chest and squeezed at all she could find.

She turned around to find her friend brightly smiling at the scene, her lips red as ever, her grin unforgiving. "Just look at you," she said, her eyes still on Lincoln. "You look like you're about to burst."

"Would you give us a moment, Morgan? We weren't finished."

Gretchen's smile became colder at the harshness in Lincoln's voice.

Sara herself was getting rather tired. If Lincoln was going to behave like the macho man everyone around school made him out to be, then she had no interest in being his friend.

She hadn't wanted to hurt him last night, and part of herself suffered for it. But she also thought it was completely unfair for him to act like there'd been a secret agreement between them all along, that though she'd said no to being his girlfriend, they would actually get there in the end, and he got a right to say who she could or couldn't date in the meantime.

"I think Sara's finished with _you_," Gretchen said. "Aren't you, S?"

Sara looked back at Lincoln in helpless silence.

The way Gretchen had framed it, there was little more she could do.

If she said no, then Lincoln would only add that to her 'mixed messaging'. Maybe a clean cut was for the best.

Yet she couldn't forgive herself for the cruelty of it, like Gretchen had just stabbed Lincoln in the heart and she just stood there, not touching the sword, not trying to help him.

When finally he walked away, Sara felt it had lasted forever, that moment of looking at each other in agonizing silence, and the relief to be released from the grip of his burning eyes was soon blasted away when she found herself facing the girls –

Lisa, Nika, and Gretchen.

"What a loser," Gretchen sighed, her eyes following Lincoln beneath long blackened lashes. "Never would have bothered to notice him if I thought he was going to join the no-means-yes team."

Sara found it safer to remain silent.

Instead of studying Gretchen, who was a master at acting, she looked at Lisa and Nika, but their faces were blank and terrified, of little help to figure out what was going on.

"Gretchen, I know you're angry," Sara said, because the idea that the four of them could go back to normal after what had happened last night was ridiculous, and she knew Gretchen would only be going with it if could lead her to some greater, meaner finish.

"Angry?" Her voice was the same sweet honey shade as ever. "Nonsense. I don't tell you who to date, S. It's your life. Your decision."

Maybe that's when it struck Sara she had always _seen_ Gretchen's performance and yet, she'd never thought to try and break it until now. After all, everyone in school was acting. Gretchen was only the best at it. But now, that syrupy voice felt only like a trap meant to draw small creatures and entangle their limbs into a lure.

As Sara stared into Gretchen's face, she realized just how deep a predicament she was in.

What could she do now? Walk away, when Gretchen was – visibly – offering friendship? But there would be a sting at the end of it, Sara knew this for certain. Just how bad a sting, only time could tell.

"Well," Gretchen said when the bell rang, her black shoulder-length hair bouncing supply as she looked behind her. "We should get going. Class is about to start."

Cautious, Sara followed the girls down the hall, casting glances at Lisa and Nika every once in a while, but their faces were the same brittle masks as before.

What was Gretchen up to? What did she _want_?

The only thing Sara knew for certain was what she didn't want, and that was going back to hanging out as if nothing had happened.

_She must think I'm stupid_, Sara reckoned.

Or maybe just weak. Maybe just too _nice_ to push away old friends on suspicion and instinct alone, when they themselves were betraying no outward signs of hostility.

Sara still didn't know what to do about this when she stepped into the classroom, which had already started to fill up.

"Go on," the teacher said, "take your seats."

And Sara went to take hers in the front row, when the vacancy of the chair next to hers struck her senses as abominably wrong.

Michael was always there before her, always, even on that first day, when his presence had intrigued her so.

Instead of sitting down, Sara cast a look behind her, scanning until she found Gretchen, but there was nothing to read on her smiling face.

"Miss Tancredi, please sit down."

"But –"

Sara's voice seemed to turn solid in her throat.

Giving up on Gretchen, her eyes had found Lincoln instead, and the way his gaze fled hers, staring intently at the window instead, with his hands squeezed into fists above the table, was good enough to give her one unambiguous message.

Michael would not be coming to school today.

…

**End Notes**: Thanks for all your support. Please share your thoughts in the comment section!


	9. Chapter 9

WARNINGS: This chapter contains references to violence

…

If Sara had been less overwhelmed by the gossiping mouths of her fellow pupils that morning, or if she had brushed close enough to one of the groups to actually listen to what the whole school was saying, then she would have known more about what had happened last night, at the Beehive, after she unexpectedly decided to leave with Michael Scofield.

Namely, she would know that, looking like a charging bull, Lincoln had gone not two minutes after them, after barely saying goodbye to his friends.

Right at this moment, Lincoln didn't care what it looked like. Didn't care that storming out of a diner didn't agree with that whole indifferent posture he more or less consistently tried to adopt, didn't care that Nando was trying to grab his arm and get him to stay, didn't care that absolutely everyone in the school might think what he himself was thinking right now: that Sara had turned him into nothing short of a tame toy in the past few months, and now, she was making a fool of him.

He got inside his car, brushing aside the empty beer cans and other debris left over from his hanging out with his friends there before getting to the hive. The car smelled of booze and smokes and stale fries.

Without thinking, Lincoln started the car and rolled into the main street that led out of the 'Hive.

It wasn't hard to spot them.

They were wandering into the streets, walking at a strolling pace, holding hands.

Lincoln's heart was pounding madly inside his chest.

"Idiot," he muttered. "She had you learning _lines_, for God's sake. Always hated Shakespeare. Bloody hell."

It was difficult to drive slow, not to let the vehicle follow the spot where his eyes were set, burning on the back of his brother's head.

Lincoln didn't allow himself to look at him now, when they were at school. It was best to let the rumors die out, if he didn't want people finding out about their relationship.

The only people he'd told were Nando and Sara, and as angry as he was with her at the moment, he didn't think she'd gone about spreading that information.

Lincoln kept his distance, making sure the pair never spotted him. It was the first time he followed someone, by car or otherwise, but he thought he did a rather nice job of it.

Why he did it was absolutely unclear to him; it was especially unclear when they snuck into a building that must lead to Michael's apartment, and Lincoln had to park in the opposite street and sit there and wait, like an idiot.

What had he been thinking?

That he'd confront Sara? Yes, right at this moment, it had felt in order. And say what? That she couldn't just take off with his brother, that that sounded like the most unfair thing she could ever do to him?

Lincoln waited a long time.

Now that he'd made it all the way here, it would be pointless to leave without getting at least some satisfaction from the ride.

One of his friends had forgotten a pack of cigarette that lay on the floor in the backseat, and though Lincoln didn't smoke, he considered giving the habit a try, just to have something to do. Nando called him a couple of times and the second time, Lincoln picked up, tried to sound nonchalant.

"Hey, Nando."

"Jesus, Linc. You scared me a little, storming out of there like you did."

"Nothing to worry about. I'm home. Just had a nasty headache to nurse."

"Is that true, or is that what you want me to tell the others?"

"Whichever feels best to you."

"Right," Nando sighed.

Sometimes, it felt like his friend was getting truly tired of him; like, if theirs hadn't been such a long-standing friendship, Nando would have slammed the door on him a long time ago. Lincoln didn't resent that. Fernando Sucre was a nice kid.

It was Lincoln's own fault if he pretended he had no dark edge, that nothing from his parents' death to his estrangement with his brother could get to him. If you hide some of yourself from your friends, then you don't get to feel betrayed that they don't like what they see when it comes out.

Maybe if Lincoln was always honest about how he really felt, about that urge to shout that snuck up on him sometimes, unannounced, then he would have no friends at all.

Like Michael.

It was hours before they came out.

By the time Sara's red head of hair caught his attention, Lincoln had lost all hope, thought she was definitely going to spend the night.

There was a ridiculous look on her face, not exactly a smile; a look some of the girls he knew had on their faces when they got high.

They started to walk and Lincoln turned on the car, cursing. He had waited too long, surprise numbing his senses. He lost them for a moment, panic rising in peaks, but caught them again on the same avenue they'd walked down on their way to Michael's flat. They were going the same way they had come.

Michael was taking her home, Lincoln realized. On foot?

Lincoln wanted to laugh, but the anger had made his throat too tight.

If one of his friends wanted to have a date with a girl, they borrowed his car, or somehow got their hands on their folks'. It just didn't do, _walking_ a girl home; and it took hours, too.

Maybe Sara wouldn't be into him that much after that.

He couldn't picture any of the girls he'd gone on dates with having to walk more than fifteen minutes without complaining. From where he was, he could only see the back of her head now, her red hair easy to spot in the night, but the look he'd seen on her face as they were getting out of the building kept flashing back into his mind.

They stopped in a neighborhood Lincoln recognized as Sara's.

Not that he'd ever been at her place, never, but he knew her father was rich, some hot-shot politician, the girls had talked about it on a few occasions.

Lincoln parked his car in some corner and watched transfixed as they said goodbye.

He waited for a kiss and inexplicably felt no relief when there wasn't one.

Because Sara had that same look of floating happiness on her face, that look _he_ hadn't known how to create even after playing friends for months and speaking Hamlet lines he'd learnt by heart.

His brother's face was in full view again as he started walking away. Lincoln's eyes shot from Michael to Sara – who was just standing there, watching Michael, like a bewitched girl in a vampire movie.

That was just perfect, wasn't it? And unsurprising, too. When they were little, everyone had preferred Michael; their mother, for one, couldn't get over how clever he was, how _independent_. All because he could tie his shoelaces early and read better than Lincoln before he was five years old.

Now though, Lincoln couldn't say what did it. By becoming popular, becoming what every girl wanted and what every boy wanted to be, he thought he'd gotten rid of that empty pit inside his chest, which filled with burning anger every time he saw Michael.

It was clearer than ever now that he'd been wrong.

Lincoln didn't hesitate for a second when Michael passed by his parked vehicle without a look back. He got out of his car, slammed the door behind him, and he felt suddenly certain that this was what the whole night had been about.

Seeing his brother, alone.

"Walking home, are you, Romeo?" He heard the fire in his own voice as he spoke.

Michael turned around.

Hate boiled thick in Lincoln's throat at the sight of those quiet blue eyes, eyes that nothing seemed able to move.

What kind of a little boy doesn't cry when he finds out both his parents died in a car crash?

But Michael hadn't; not then, on the spot, nor in the days that followed before he and Lincoln were separated.

Secretly, Lincoln suspected his brother might suffer from some kind of sociopathic disorder. Lincoln kept that secret from himself, because that would take the responsibility off Michael's shoulders, and then Lincoln's anger would have nowhere to turn.

And with no target to discharge it, Lincoln thought he might actually burst.

"Yes, as a matter of fact," Michael said.

Exasperatingly, he didn't sound surprised.

"Did you follow us all the way to my apartment and wait for us to come out? I wouldn't have expected you to have the patience."

Lincoln evaded the question with a jibe. "In all the books you read, you never got your hands on dating one-o'-one? Spoiler alert, you suck at it, man."

The laugh Michael let out was genuine and Lincoln felt his hands turn into fists so tight, he knew immediately what was going to happen. It was only a matter of time.

"Is that why you followed me? To give me a lecture on dating?"

It would have been so easy for Michael to go on with that arrogant tone and say that, clearly, what Lincoln had been trying on Sara hadn't been working and so he'd rather do without his advice.

The obvious fact of Sara's preference lay thick and smothering in the air between the two men, so clear it almost seemed tangible, but Michael didn't speak the words.

Lincoln craved to push his brother into a corner, to get him to react in a way he would understand, so he could lead the situation where he needed to.

He could feel the anger bottling up, like water pouring into a glass over the brim.

"Why'd you have to go after her?" Lincoln managed not to raise his voice; it didn't take that much effort to sound indifferent. He had the practice. Besides, he had known from the moment he had gotten out of his car that this was about Michael, much more than it was about Sara.

"I don't think I did that," Michael said. "And I don't think I need to give you reports about why I do things."

They looked at each other in silence for a moment.

It struck Lincoln this was the first conversation he had with his brother since he had moved to town – really, it was the first time they spoke in years.

And Lincoln felt a brutal need to look Michael up and down and say he hadn't changed, to seal his feelings for his brother once and for all, so he could hold on to his anger, his resent.

It just felt like too much a part of himself would be gone without it.

A small voice crept inside his head, _Why did you have to find such an unusual target? Kids lose their parents, they get angry at God, at the authorities, at all sorts of people. What kind of a boy sets all his hate on an angel-faced brother? _

Maybe it was only that Michael didn't break down, didn't feel anything, while Lincoln was prey to such outbursts of rage and tears.

Yes, maybe that was it.

But Lincoln shook off the voice before it could get too deep.

"It's late," Michael said, taking his eyes off his brother to sweep the night with his icy gaze. "I'll go home now."

Lincoln didn't move, didn't say that that wasn't going to happen.

Of course it wasn't.

He hadn't just spent hours freezing inside his car so the night could end without one drop of satisfaction.

"Why'd you move here, Mike?" Lincoln asked. "Was it just to piss me off?"

Again, Michael didn't seize a window to call him out on his self-centeredness.

What he did was look at him with a calm look of understanding. After a while, he said, "I'm not going to make it easy on you. You'd like to punch me right now, I see that – get it out of your system. But you should know, I'm not going to get angry or start teasing you. I'm not going to prompt you to do it. If you really want to, just go ahead. Or let me go home."

Silence settled between them once more. Finally, Michael walked past him, and Lincoln was filled with a rage so raw, he felt every muscle in his body tighten.

That was how his brother always made him feel. Disarmed. Disabled. Like the flow of his own feelings was crippling him, while Michael stood pain-free, pain-proof. Impenetrable.

It was not hate for his brother, though, but self-hatred which spread through Lincoln like venomous intoxication, as he got hold of Michael's arm and dragged him back, before smashing his fist into his face.

Blood spurted out of Michael's nose, and it was a relief to Lincoln; seeing his brother bleed. Seeing he was made out of flesh and bones just like anyone, that his blood didn't remain magically trapped below the surface, that he wasn't completely empty inside.

He only punched him twice, because he was down after the first blow, and hitting any man that wasn't fighting back was too vile for Lincoln to endure it for long.

Lincoln had been holding his brother by the collar of his shirt to stop him from following, and when he let go, disgusted at himself and at Michael's refusal to hit him back, Michael collapsed entirely on the sidewalk.

Lincoln checked his knuckles, blood-stained, raw.

_I only hit him twice_, he thought, but the shamefulness of the act made any reassurance impossible.

Suddenly, he wanted to take Michael by the hand and drive him home. Why had he done this now, here? What was Michael supposed to do, walk it off?

These thoughts must have been visible on Lincoln's face. His mouth opened, he was about to speak, or maybe extend his hand to where his brother lay on the ground.

Then Michael's eyes found Lincoln and he saw the anger burning there, unspoken and unspeakable.

"If you touch me again, I'll kill you."

The glaring truth in his threat was such, Lincoln took a step back, though his brother's voice had been free from anger, barely above a whisper.

Michael stared at him from the ground, pushing him to retreat with his icy silence, and Lincoln obliged, until finally he was in his car, driving God only knew where.

He should feel ashamed, terrified at his own violence, but instead for the first time in his life, Lincoln felt at peace.

It was a feeling that couldn't be helped, and Lincoln enjoyed it, felt it fill his soul with quiet acceptance.

Because he had seen a real glimpse of his brother back there when the rage shone in his eyes.

Because for the first time, he had looked at his brother and seen something he recognized.

…

**End Notes**: Thanks for reading this till the end. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Take care!


	10. Chapter 10

WARNINGS: This chapter contains references to violence and to a childhood trauma.

…

"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, _Crime and Punishment_

It was well past five a.m. by the time Michael got back to his apartment that night.

The door slammed behind him, though his neighbors could attest that he always shut it gently, even during the day. Michael peeled off his clothes and cut straight to the bathroom, turned on the hot water in the shower and stepped right under it.

Pain flashed to his brain and stole his breath as the shower spray hit his bruised face. He could feel his skin loosening under the hot water where the blood had caked, under his nose, on his lips, down his chin.

He couldn't remember if he'd run into anybody on the way back.

If so, he must have been a sight to behold, and it was no wonder no one had tried to give him a hard time or get a laugh out of the scrawny kid with a bloody face.

Surely, if someone had been tempted to try, they would have stopped dead at the unleashed fire in Michael's eyes.

The burning water was not burning enough.

He inhaled deeply and his lungs were on fire, the air blasting through the pipes of his broken nose and he felt when he released his breath, smoke might come out, as if he had turned into a dragon.

Motionless, teeth ground tight, he stayed there until he was out of hot water and the spray turned lukewarm. He caught the handle and stopped the flow before it had time to run cold.

There was no room for thoughts in his head.

Ever since Lincoln's fist had smashed into his face, Michael hadn't been thinking, hadn't been himself. His mind was filled with one image alone – _red_ – and every nerve in his body was concentrated on staying in control.

The night was blurring past and present, there was no time, no space. Only red.

Only blood.

Michael kept his eyes closed. He could hardly feel the reality around him, the concreteness of the wet tile beneath him as he sank to his knees, holding his head in his hands.

He started rocking back and forth, trying to soothe away what he no longer remembered to be a memory.

He couldn't only see the blood, even with his eyes closed. He could taste it. Smell it. Feel its cold sticky kiss on his face.

At no point did he think he needed to go to bed and get some sleep, or that he needed to get to school. His chores as a janitor always made him arrive a couple hours before everyone else.

But none of that entered Michael's brain just now, because he was no longer a seventeen-year-old high school student.

He was a small boy, strapped tightly into a child car seat. Broken glass everywhere. The smell of death and gasoline.

His cheek, pressed against the tarmac, red with his parents' blood; it had had time to cool by the time help arrived.

Shivering inside the shower cabin, Michael's mind longed for sleep, for one minute of rest, but there came no sweeping darkness to force him out of the horrors he usually managed to keep at bay.

So Michael did what any child would do, if a monster crept in at night and cracked his bedroom door open: he stared unblinkingly at the chilling eye of what made him drunk with terror, and he waited for the monster to go away.

…

Sara got straight home after school that day, with a feeling of foreboding inside her chest. Gretchen had been the same honey-sweet shade of gentle with her, and Sara didn't know what she resented most. That Gretchen found her too stupid to know that something was up, or that though she _did_ know, she couldn't bring herself to cut the girls out of her life without further evidence.

After all, what had Gretchen done, really? Nothing. So how could Sara walk up to her and say_, I can feel you're angry at me, that you're playing games, and so if you don't mind, you'll stop or I'll leave_.

But what really made it hard for Sara to focus all day, what filled her with dread and anticipation, was Michael's empty seat in every class.

He'd even missed PE, and the coach's disappointment not to see his best swimmer almost pushed her over the brim.

All day, she thought she'd just leave, play sick for the day, and go see what this was about.

It was horrible to wait in complete uncertainty. Half a dozen times, she had the reflex to want to text him or call him on his cell phone, but she remembered that they had never exchanged phone numbers.

So, at the very second that the ring chimed for the end of class, Sara jumped to her feet, scrambled her books from her table and rushed for the bus stop. There was a glint of malice in Gretchen's eyes, watching her, and she didn't want to risk her trying to slow her down.

The great Tancredi house was empty, Frank wouldn't be home from work for several hours and so Sara hurried to the garage, grabbed the keys for the spare car they kept shiny and scarcely used all year long, and she started to roll down the same direction where she and Michael had walked yesterday night.

At the time, it didn't occur to her to think this was the single most rebellious thing she'd ever done, that the reason why her father didn't use this car much – it was a Bentley – was that it was such an expensive and rare edition, but Frank Tancredi had never thought to keep the keys somewhere Sara wouldn't find them, so absurd it was to think she would ever want to take it out for a ride herself.

It was strange how faster the car could go than their two legs. When Sara recognized the building, it felt like she'd only been driving for a minute. It had been like a dream, going from her father's house to Michael's street, and when she got out, her knees wobbling, she still felt like the place she was walking into was more dream than real.

There was no security at all in Michael's building. She had noticed that last night. Just a broad wooden door, which she pushed open, and then, threw herself into the staircase. He lived on the sixth floor, no elevator.

Then it was no wonder she was breathless when she got to his door and started knocking. The first few times came out as such a terrified pounding, she rectified herself in mid-course to try to give a more appropriate, moderate knock.

But there was nothing on the other side of the door. Only silence.

"Michael," she called out, without thinking. "It's me."

A moment that seemed a glimpse of eternity went by as she stood alone, facing the wooden door, her lungs on fire, her cheeks colored from climbing the stairs, her hair tousled.

There was the sound of some movement inside. She could picture Michael getting up from the sofa he must also use as a bed, then take a few steps toward the door.

It slid open without ceremony, and Sara realized he mustn't have locked it.

Then he stood before her, and her jaw slackened despite herself. _Stop it!_ She thought, the part of her that had deeply integrated the fact that when people had scars or nasty-looking wounds, staring was always rude. But it was beyond her to stop.

First, the look on her face was one of sheer horror, before compassion flooded in, unheeded, a warm wave of affection because it was Michael, beneath the blood-stained eye and burst nose, the quiet boy from school who never bothered anyone, who never asked anyone for anything.

"Oh!" She cried.

He opened his mouth, maybe to speak. She didn't know what on earth he could have wanted to say. For some reason, she couldn't imagine him going for any of the easy answers – _It's not as bad as it looks,_ or _The other guy looks worse_.

But she never gave him time to go through with whatever he was planning to go with.

Instead, crude instinct took control and, before Sara could feel surprise at her own boldness, she threw her arms around him and held him to her, hard enough to knock the breath out of them both.

She heard a stifled groan seep from his throat at the suddenness of the contact. It had never struck her until this second how tall he really was. Sara was tall herself, had been hit by puberty early and towered over the bunch of her classmates at least until high school. It was more of an advantage than anything else, as it discouraged a great deal of boys, shorter than her, from asking her out on dates.

Stupid things like that mattered to kids her age.

But Michael was at least one head taller, as she had to stand on tiptoe to rest her head in the crook of his neck.

After a moment, he put one arm around her shoulder blades, and she felt suddenly very small.

It was the first time she was held by a man.

Though his embrace was somewhat stiff, it was not awkward. She could feel the warmth of his body through his clothes and for the first time, standing close enough to breathe him in, she realized just how much she liked him.

He smelled like early mornings, like ground coffee and libraries. Sara had never tasted coffee before but thought it smelled like a dream, like the glimpse of a new and adult life that would unwind for her in due time.

Even before Michael wrapped an arm around her himself, a feeling of complete rightness and freedom swamped Sara's whole being. She felt she had never been around someone she understood so well yet knew so little, someone that it felt so absolutely right to touch.

They didn't move for a long time, standing on the threshold of his apartment, Sara's feet still into the hall.

At some point, he said, "Your hair smells like cherry blossoms."

His tone was so factual, she drew back, wanting to laugh, but the sight of his face immediately sucked all the humor out of her.

"My God, Michael. Your face."

Blood brimmed the white of his left eye in a strange sight, unlike the image Sara had of violence. In films, they showed actors with a black eye, but never that disturbing, intrusive red.

Michael took in her words, her silent shock and compassion, he took all of it steadily, without moving.

Obliviously, she thought again that his brother would have shrugged it off if he had been in his shoes.

And the thought of Lincoln filled her with sudden anger, taking over the rest.

"Did Lincoln do this?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

It surprised her he would be so forthright. And it was too much, for her to know it for certain so quickly, to imagine Lincoln could actually be so violent to his own brother. The boy who sat docilely with her in the library while she helped him with his homework. Her friend.

"Oh," she said, "the _brute_."

Suddenly, she wanted to slam her fists into the wall, to hammer every surface she could reach with tiny punches until this wildfire had evacuated her system.

"The vicious brutish caveman!"

"I wonder if that's the names girls usually use to insult boys."

"Why aren't you _in the least_ angry?"

"I am," he said. That pacified her instantly. "Come in." He moved aside and soon, they were both sitting on the couch, one of the very few pieces of furniture in his minuscule apartment. "I think he must have followed us out of the Beehive," Michael said. "He waited until you'd gone back to your house before he came to me."

Sara's mind worked despite her will. She thought of how she had sneaked into her father's mansion, terrified of making a noise, then eaten some sliced bread, her stomach knotted at the thought of what would happen the next day at school, with Gretchen.

And all the while, Michael had been bleeding on the pavement?

"How did you get home?"

"I walked, of course."

Sara was going to launch herself on some other wild rant about what a despicable ape Lincoln was when Michael cut in, surprisingly calm. "Do you want some pasta?"

"I – what?"

"I haven't eaten all day. Didn't think what time it was. I think I should probably eat. Are you hungry?"

Sara was going to answer no out of polite habit when she realized she was half-starved herself, having eaten nothing at breakfast and barely managed a couple of bites for lunch.

"Yeah. Sure."

Michael sprang to his feet and got some water boiling in a small pot.

"I missed the whole day at school, then," he said.

"Yeah."

"Hum." He took it in with grave seriousness. "I'll call tomorrow. Try to explain."

"If they only take one look at your face –"

"That's rather going to be a problem, I think. Maybe they'll fire me."

Sara's mouth opened in shock. "The _school_?"

"I mean, as a janitor."

"Oh."

He poured in half a pack of spaghetti into the pot and started stirring.

"I'm sure – maybe they'll be understanding," she said. But that sounded lame. Sara wondered if she should say Michael could get another job, that plenty of families hired kids to mow their lawns or such things, that she'd talk about him around her neighborhood.

For a flashing second, she actually imagined him working for her father, replacing their seventy-year-old gardener. It was easy to picture him on a lawn-mower, shirtless, or walking around the garden cutting hedges with a great pair of sheaths, his eyes secretly following her, as at the auditorium.

When she came out of her reverie, she realized Michael's blue eyes were staring fixedly at her, and she hurriedly feigned a deep interest in the cracked polish over her fingernails.

He she just been fantasizing about Michael? Did that count as a fantasy?

After a while, Michael gave her a bowl of spaghetti and a fork. He ate his own lunch standing up by the counter, looking deep in thought. Sara was so hungry she ate it all, although it was bland – no cheese, no butter or olive oil, no tomato sauce. Just pasta and salt.

"I can't believe Lincoln would do something like that," she said. It was easier to speak her mind looking at her bowl of spaghetti.

Michael was silent for such a long time, she thought he wasn't going to answer at all. Her remark felt stupider with each passing second.

Then, he said, "I told you it was nothing special, the fact that Lincoln hates me. Maybe it is a little special."

He sounded ashamed, like he'd lied to her. She looked up at him in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"A lot of people hate me because I don't fit in, and Lincoln hates me. But he doesn't hate me because of that. Maybe he thinks he does, but I don't."

"What do you think?"

His plate was empty, and he put it on the edge of the sink. "I think I'm a reminder of what's darkest about him," he said. "I think when he looks at me, he sees what he's most ashamed of. Not _me_ as such. Lincoln's always been jealous but it wasn't all bad between us, before. He used to sit on the floor with me and do jigsaw puzzles. He'd get annoyed that I managed better than he did, but he'd laugh, too, and we'd play sometimes. We didn't like the same games but I humored him and he humored me back."

He paused. Sara wanted to egg him on but her tongue was lead in her mouth. To picture the both of them as boys, as Michael was describing, was unhinging somehow.

"It all changed when our parents died."

When he didn't go on, she couldn't help but prod him, "How?" She said. "_Why_?"

"I suppose, because we both reacted to it in different ways."

"But that's not – you're his little brother. You're the only family he has left."

"I'm a reminder," Michael said.

Sara fell helplessly silent. She wanted to say that that made no sense, that he and Lincoln should have become closer as a result. But why? Because that was how movies and books said it happened?

Then, Michael spoke again, and Sara forgot her thoughts altogether.

"I was in the car with them," he said. On a matter-of-fact tone, but with some surprise showing on his face. Like he couldn't understand what thread of logic had led him to this statement. "My parents, during the accident. I was in the car. Lincoln doesn't know that. I mean of course he knows it, but he forgot. I remember. I remember policemen taking me home, after the accident. I hardly had a scratch on me. I remember how Lincoln looked at me, when he understood I was all that was coming home to him, and I think right there and then he hated me, for being alive, or maybe for being there inside that car when he was at home, waiting.

"He became like a wild animal. He broke out of our sitter's grip and threw himself on the floor, he beat his fists on the ground and he screamed, he screamed like he was broken mad. And I think he was enraged because _I_ wasn't. That he hated me because his pain was ugly, and mine was inside. And I knew, right from this moment, that Lincoln and I would never understand each other, because we didn't speak the same language."

Sara felt like a stone statue on the couch. There was nothing to say. Nothing smart, nothing appropriate. Nothing _right_.

"Michael –"

"I know that's what it is," he said, like he thought she was going to try to persuade him it wasn't. "I could see it when he first saw me at school. That he's still burning with that same anger and shame. He doesn't know it, doesn't want to know it, but that makes no difference. Underneath the surface, he's still screaming his heart out in grief and to him, my silence is intolerable."

Sara got to her feet. She didn't think. There was little distance to break before she reached him, it was such a small room. Soon, she was standing very close to him, and she put her hand over his, leant against the counter.

"I'm sorry," she said.

There was a while of silence.

"Do _you_ hate him?" She asked.

"No. I just wish he'd leave me alone. I think that's all I've ever wanted from anyone, and all would be fine with me if I could just be alone."

"And me?" She was barely conscious of saying the words.

"You're alone, too," he said. "I see it. You're around people but never really with them. That intrigued me."

"Is that why you kept staring, at school?" She felt disappointed somehow.

"Maybe," he said. "No."

"Then why?"

"I don't know," he was honest. "What do you think?"

She was going to say she didn't know, either, but instead said, "I think sometimes we see people and they draw us, inexplicably, before they've even spoken a word."

His eyes were like blue abysses, unlimited depths. When he looked at her like that, Sara felt like she was standing on the edge of a precipice, only the fall would be a delight. Inevitable.

"Yes," he said finally. "I think so, too."

His hand felt warm under hers.

If she looked back on this, later, maybe she would think it would have been logical for him to kiss her, but at the moment her head was void from doubt and expectations.

She touched his cheek with her other hand. The skin didn't look bruised but he flinched slightly at the contact.

Their bodies were almost touching again, as they had when she hugged him in the doorframe.

"You should go to a hospital," she said.

"No money," he answered.

Sara suddenly wanted to scream. A flash of anger flew to her brain when she realized how much money _she_ had, still she couldn't offer to drive him to the hospital and pay for his bill, because she had no bank account, no savings of her own. Her father had never seen the point in giving her a regular allowance. Instead, he bought her what she wanted and she asked for little; her books on medicine were costly but good investment to his mind. She had no other expensive hobbies. When she went out with the girls, he gave her a fifty dollar-bill like it was a penny and she was grateful, that was all.

It struck her that Michael's money was entirely his own, earned, not given. If he wanted to help a friend, he would do what he could to do it, all by himself; he wouldn't need to ask anyone for anything.

"Are you going to come to school tomorrow?"

"Of course," he said. "I didn't mean not to go today." Honestly, for a while there Michael had completely forgotten that school existed. "Your skin is soft."

Sara was so surprised she drew back a step. Until he acknowledged it out loud, she only thought of how soothing the feel of his hand was under hers, the smoothness of a cheek he probably didn't shave yet; it didn't really strike her what they were doing until he said it.

"I should be getting back," she looked at the door. His own eyes were still fixed unashamedly on her. "My dad will be home from work soon."

"Sure. I'm happy you came."

The absolute honesty in his voice filled her with such a brutal wave of affection, she nearly threw her arms around him again.

But she had spoken the truth.

It may be all right for her to come home late one night, even if her dad had noticed; she was a teenager after all. But if he came home on the next day and she was gone, the Bentley gone – that might actually get her in trouble.

"Thanks for lunch," she said, couldn't think right at this second what else to say.

"My pleasure. Did you walk here?"

"No."

He said he'd walk her to her car and Sara felt like she was floating through the flight of stairs, like she and Michael had stumbled into space.

Nika had told her that being in love felt like having butterfly wings in your stomach. Sara thought it felt like flying but with no wings at all, just like walking into a dream, where all everyday life concerns felt remote.

She couldn't say yet whether she liked it. It was too strange, a little disturbing; Sara liked keeping both feet on the ground, and there was something frightening about how everything she used to care about seemed to have shrunk to the size of a thimble. Med school felt far away, and the drive to learn all the bones in the human body was drifting peacefully astray down the ocean of life, while she was headed –

Where?

She couldn't say.

But there was little time for her to linger on the frightful fact that Michael had become so important so fast, because as they stepped out of his building, shock punched into Sara's chest at the sight of her father's Bentley, thrashed, the outside rearview mirrors left and right ripped off, a hole spreading cobweb patterns across the windshield.

"Oh no," Michael said, reading the expression of horror on her face. "Is this your car?"

"But –" Sara couldn't believe this. She kept thinking, _This is not happening_, and she was sure at some point she would open her eyes and the car would be brand-new, reality would apologize for its own rudeness and she would drive it home safely into the garage, her father never knowing she'd taken it.

"Nice cars don't have good longevity prospects in this neighborhood," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize that's what you'd used to come here."

Past the initial shock, Sara tried to react like a responsible adult. Deep breaths. Except she couldn't play the adult now, because if she had been one, this wouldn't have been her father's car, she wouldn't have borrowed it without asking, and she wouldn't be in trouble.

"Oh God," she said. "My dad _loves_ this car."

Michael nodded in silent sympathy. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Hide me in your apartment forever?"

He gave a genuine laugh that made the whole affair feel worth it to Sara, broken car and all.

"Really," he said, "I think I'd like that."

She realized she would too and pretended to look at the damages.

"But that wouldn't do you any good. It might actually make things worse. Things will be all right," he said. And it felt strange, coming from a boy whose face looked like it'd been through a boxing match. "Parents forgive."

Sara let out a plaintive sigh at the sight of the Bentley. As she had never given her father a reason to ground her before today, she supposed she would have to take Michael's word for it.

…

It was Sara's first serious scolding, and her father was at least as embarrassed to be delivering it as she was.

"I don't know what took over you," he said.

The clock in the living room had just struck half past seven. Normally, they'd be having dinner, sitting silent opposite each other; she couldn't remember the last time anything had come to disturb their routine.

"I'm sorry," she said.

She'd apologized over three times in the past two minutes, but instinct told her self-deprecation would be the best attitude to adopt.

"I shouldn't have taken the car. It's just there was – an emergency."

"Yes," he sounded exasperated, "you told me. The boy who got in a fight." He sighed and started massaging the ridge of his nose. A good thing they didn't go through this a lot, Sara thought, because Frank Tancredi seemed to have had enough of scolding his daughter for a lifetime. "You know, I really don't get where this is coming from. You've always been such a good kid, Sara. Now, you get home late, you steal the car to go after strange boys?"

Sara opened her mouth to protest but ultimately closed it. First, she'd wanted to say Michael wasn't strange, but he unquestionably was, and she didn't see herself explaining the attraction of that to her father.

"I didn't even know you dated boys," he said.

"I don't. I mean – it's recent."

"Well, Sara, I don't see what else I can do, given the position you're putting me in."

Sara steeled herself; of course, she knew what was coming, but it felt surreal, like she was watching it happen to an actress in some movie.

"You're grounded," he said. "No more hanging out with friends after school, no more parties, and no more boys. I don't want you dating if it's going to take your head away from your studies like this."

"But dad –"

It wasn't that she _wanted_ to sound like a protesting teenager. Honestly, she was just going to make the reasonable argument that she was a free individual, nearly a grownup, and her father simply couldn't tell her what kind of relationships she was allowed to have.

Only when Frank interrupted her did she realize how it sounded, "We aren't negotiating, Sara. You've always had your freedom, and now you can't be trusted with it, I have to do something about it. I don't like it any more than you do."

Sara stared blankly at him. There was no room for anger in her astonishment.

After a while, she volunteered, "Do you want me to go to bed without dinner?"

He considered this. "That doesn't seem like a good idea. You didn't even have any breakfast. Maybe you could take dinner up to your room?"

Sara hurried to do just that, without pointing out this sounded much more like a reward than punishment.

And so Sara sat cross-legged on her bed and ate some mushroom risotto that their cook and house-cleaner, Dolly, had left ready on the cooker this afternoon. It was actually a good evening, taking some distance from the craziness of school and Gretchen and Lincoln punching Michael. Sara opened her biology book in front of her and read all throughout dinner, and she felt at home, at peace.

Before sleep, she wanted to write Michael about what had happened – not in a complaining way, of course. Michael had it too hard for her not to feel embarrassed to complain to him about anything. But she could have passed it off as humorous, somehow; 'Guess who's been grounded and sent to bed early like a twelve-year-old?' It was a little unfair, though, considering she'd been the one to suggest that last one to her father.

Besides, she couldn't text Michael and she would have to wait to see him tomorrow, at school.

Sara let out a sigh.

If things were going to go on like this, they were going to need to trade phone numbers at some point.

…

**End Notes**: Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Let me know what you think will happen next and what characters you'd like to see in the story. I'm open to suggestions.


	11. Chapter 11

"Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny."

It was hard to say whether Sara's eyes or Lincoln's gleamed with deeper anger as he spoke the line.

The next day, at school, they had cordially managed to avoid each other until they were due to practice in the auditorium at four.

And it was hell getting through this scene.

All the while, Sara's teeth were grinding hard, her fists clenched tight. All she could think of was Michael's face, the blood in his eye, the unusual lump of his broken nose.

Lincoln had fewer reasons to be really angry, more to be ashamed, but looked angrier for it as a way to hide the more embarrassing truth of what he felt.

Sara was too focused repressing her own fire to see it, and if she had, she couldn't say she would have pitied him at this moment.

When they were done, their teacher, Caroline Reynolds, stared at them in unreadable silence for a while. Her eyes went from Lincoln to Sara and back and forth until she burst out, "This was _really_ good. Without a doubt, your best performance, Lincoln! All this time, you were holding back, but you need to put life into that character! And that edginess you give him is the most interesting thing about your act!"

Sara saw Lincoln roll his eyes, but she wasn't in the mood to smile.

"And _you_!" Professor Reynolds turned to Sara, her face bright. "I love how angry you played her, Sara. Ophelias are often spineless girls who look like flowers that'll die with the next hard weather. But you gave her a real backbone! At some point, I almost thought she was going to hit Hamlet – you could have, you know. Don't hesitate getting carried away. Improvisation is the mark of true actors."

"Really," Sara hissed through her teeth. "Suppose we try it again?"

Lincoln answered laconically, "Gotta practice with my basketball team now."

Caroline Reynolds sighed. "How children multitask! Always fascinates me. All right then, off you go. Good job, both of you!"

Sara and Lincoln left the auditorium without exchanging so much as a look.

In her mind, Sara was practicing what best to say to condemn his actions, but nothing sharp enough would come. Anyway, it was best save this for when she had her anger under control; she didn't want to get carried away and make a scene at school.

He didn't even say goodbye or look at her before he cut toward the gymnasium, right after they reached the yard. Sara watched him walk away, a look of shock on her face.

How was it he got to act like he had reasons to hate her as much as she did him?

He'd attacked his brother, for Christ's sake.

Surely a wounded pride was faster to heal.

"Hey."

Sara turned around at the sound of Michael's voice. He was dressed in a plain jeans and shirt, and she looked immediately apologetic. "Not working today?"

He smiled. "I'd say my days as a janitor are over."

"Oh no. They fired you?"

"Yep."

"All because you missed one day?"

His laughter was so genuine, Sara blushed, not really from embarrassment but by the sheer warmth of him.

Coming from another guy, it would have made her feel stupid, like a little princess who doesn't understand how the world really works, that people don't go out of their ways to make your life easier, they don't say _Sure, I understand_. They don't forgive.

"I think they took one look at my face today and it gave them the impression that I was trouble."

"You're not."

It had never struck Sara to think of Michael like that. At least, not traditional trouble.

Would she say that to her dad if she ever brought him over?

"Well, anyway," Michael said. "There'll be other jobs. Can I walk with you?"

The whole stress of the day fluttered away from Sara's chest, as light as it had seemed heavy a moment before.

She liked how he phrased it. Not, _Can I walk you home _but _Can I walk with you_.

"Sure."

Sara usually took the bus, but considering that there would be no getting out of her room today, she might as well linger on the way back.

She didn't tell him about her day, though there was plenty time to. Too pleased it had disappeared to bring it right back on the table.

Besides, she could already guess Michael's advice if she talked to him about the weirdness of hanging out with the girls, the big bad wolf lurking in Gretchen's Red Riding Hood smile. You think they're going to mess with you? Michael would say. Then just leave. Disengage.

It was that simple to him.

And she couldn't even think of bringing up Lincoln. Not when Michael's face still looked like it'd been painted for Halloween.

Instead, they picked up the conversation where they'd left off the other night, before anything bad happened. It was easy to do that; grab a thread they'd both left untouched for days on end, as if conversation was never really dead between them, even in silence.

At some point, she said. "By the way…" She took a mature voice, trying to detach herself as much as possible from all the boys who had asked her that before. "Don't you think we should trade phone numbers?"

"Oh, sorry."

Slight panic crept in. Surely, Michael wasn't going to say that she'd misunderstood, that he had a perfect girlfriend outside of school, she was a grownup like him, independent and working, so she wouldn't know her.

"I don't have a phone."

"What?"

Sara tried to swallow back her surprise as soon as she heard it in her own voice. It was too hateful that she really couldn't imagine any teenage boy wouldn't have a phone.

_Privilege_.

Sometimes, she thought it was the most despicable thing about her, beyond her control as it was.

"Well, then forget it. I just thought – if you did it'd be easier if we could text, you know."

"Yeah. That makes sense."

Sara looked down at her feet, crestfallen. What with her being grounded, she supposed the only place where they could see each other for some time was school. Which was the worst of places for them, really. Everything complicated, gossip, and people getting in the way of the inexplicable simplicity of her attraction to him.

She hadn't told him about being grounded.

Right now, with him getting fired and all that, she would have sounded too much like a child.

…

"Burrows? Mind if I have a word with you?"

Gretchen's voice made the boys freeze in the middle of their basketball practice. They had been so caught in the game, they hadn't paid attention to the sound of high heels on the floor of the gymnasium.

For a second, the team only stared at the intruder, her body sheathed into a black dress that made her look like some kind of weapon.

Sucre had been holding the ball, ready to take a leap toward the basket, despite Lincoln's standing in his way, trying to block him.

But he let the ball drop and it rolled toward Gretchen, who avoided it as if it had been a grimy street animal.

"Now," she said.

The authority in her voice drew Lincoln out of his surprise. His jaw stiffened and he said, "Get lost, Morgan. We're in the middle of something here."

"I'm sure your boys could use a break."

"I said get lost."

She sighed.

Maybe she had pushed it a bit far by humiliating him like that in front of Sara.

Then this was fair enough, that he should humiliate her before they could have a real conversation. Gretchen would take it impassively.

Her gaze skimmed over the team of sweating boys, who could hardly take their eyes off of her. How much respect would it gain him, to send her away while they watched?

Her lips broke into her usual red grin. She watched as Lincoln's lip quivered ever so slightly, though his green eyes betrayed no desire. He wasn't bad at this. A pity he'd lowered in her esteem so much, chasing after Sara like a tame dog.

"Your loss," she spoke the words barely above a whisper, but she was certain all the boys in the team caught them and believed them without question.

She was aware of every move of her body as she walked away, her whole posture adapting to the fact that she was being looked at.

You could have heard a pen drop in the dumbstruck silence that saw her to the door.

When she had gone, sighs started breaking loose, and Sucre turned to Lincoln. "Man, you ain't in your right mind. I mean, Sara's cute and all –"

"Shut up." He squared his shoulders and summoned his captain-of-the-team tone. "A'right boys, back to work."

But his authority was shy in comparison to the mark that Gretchen's brief apparition had left behind.

While Sucre went to pick up the ball, Lincoln heard him mutter, "Hell of a woman."

Annoyed, Lincoln was about to point out Gretchen was hardly a woman when he decided it was best to let the subject die out. He went to the bleachers instead to get some water from his backpack, but immediately noticed a text lighting up on the screen of his cell.

The number was unknown, but he had no trouble identifying the sender.

When you're done playing tough with your gorillas, meet me at the bus stop outside the yard. Or don't you want to get back at Sara?

…

It was around five thirty p.m. when Lincoln arrived at the rendezvous spot, hands in his pockets, his looks as casual as ever; but deep down, he was cautious as a U.S. politician meeting with an especially slippery opponent during a diplomatic showdown.

There was no one from school around at this hour, as Gretchen must have intended. She cast Lincoln a playful glance when she saw him. Maybe there was no mischief meant by those blue eyes today, maybe it simply came naturally to her now.

Still, Lincoln had decided to show no vulnerabilities.

"I'm not here to fuck around," he said before she had time to speak.

Her face painted with a pretty look of surprise. "My," she said, "you _are_ a brute. It's all business and no foreplay with you."

"You came here because you had something to say. Say it. Or I'm out of here."

"Okay," but she was still smiling that same smile, like she was in on a joke he'd never have the brainpower to get. "Okay. I'm not going to make this long. Simply put, I want you to do something for me."

He gave a bitter laugh. "I don't see why I'd be doing you any favors, Morgan."

"Not a favor. It wouldn't cost you. Really, it'd be a relief to you."

"Why don't you let me decide that for myself?"

"I want you to quit the school play."

Surprise momentarily overwhelmed his façade of nonchalance. "Wait, what? Why?" He remembered what she had written, that this was a way of getting back at Sara. "You think Sara cares about the play so much? She doesn't. Back during rehearsal today, she could barely stand to look at me. I'd be doing her a favor by bailing."

"You'd be doing _yourself_ a favor. I mean, what are you really doing, spending hours on some school play every week? And all that so what? So you can make a fool of yourself on stage come December?"

Lincoln had to admit she had a point. He had dragged himself painfully to rehearsal today, and he didn't see how the following sessions would be any more pleasant. Some of his friends had been cracking jokes about his new hobby, but so long as it was just about trying to get into a girl's pants, they could understand it. Now though, considering that girl looked like she might set his head on fire with her eyes, and he was nowhere near sealing the deal with her, as the boys in his team would put it, the affair was getting downright humiliating.

That was without mentioning that at this stage, Lincoln's flirtation with theater was some abstract thing to his boys. If they actually came to watch him struggle over his lines during the mid-year representation… Would they ever let him forget it?

Still, he was cautious as he appraised the look in Gretchen's eyes. "And what do _you_ stand to gain?"

She shrugged.

"Give it up," he said. "It doesn't suit you to act innocent."

Her eyes sparkled slightly. "Just some idea I'd like to see play out."

"What idea?"

"If you do this, you'll see for yourself."

He shook his head. By this time, he felt sure it'd be safer for him to wriggle his way out of the play one way or another, but it felt rookie to make it look like he was caving in to Gretchen.

"Like I said. I don't want to fuck around. Give it to me straight, or no deal."

A scowl so hateful found its way on her face, Lincoln felt a little awed for a second. He didn't think she caught it though and, thank god, no one else had been around to see.

"I'll tell you what, Burrows. If you don't quit the play, I'll make sure everyone worth a damn in this school is here to watch. We'll have rotten tomatoes ready, iced drinks, the whole thing. By the time we've reached Act two, you'll be so filthy, you'll look like something that washed out of the sewers."

"Is that what you're planning to do to Sara?"

The features on her face relaxed into her old smile. "Let's just go our separate ways, Burrows. You give up the play, go back to being a full-time basket-ball player. You have your plans, and I have mine."

Lincoln looked her up and down, stalling for time. Really, he didn't see what other choice he had. "You're a fucking psycho, you know that?"

And for some reason, Gretchen looked at him like he'd paid his respects to her.

Maybe because, for the first time since they'd known each other, he had looked at her and seen her as the formidable tyrant everyone said she was.

…

**End Notes**: I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Take care!


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